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DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS. 



THE 



NOTE BOOK 



OS 



AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 



BY 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



ATTTHOR OF 



COJVFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC. 



BOSTON: 
TICK NOR AND FIELDS 

M DCCC LV. 



L-ff- |\,v. SL- 



^55 



Ng 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

THUBSTON AND TOBRY. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

Three Memorable Murders ....,<... 1 

True Relations of the Bible to merely Human Science 72 

Literary History of the Eighteenth Century ... 81 

The Antigone of Sophocles 137 

The Marquess Wellesley 177 

Milton vs. Southey and Landor 193 

Falsification of English History 217 

A Peripatetic Philosopher 241 

On Suicide 260 

Superficial Knowledge 267 

English Dictionaries 274 

Dryden's Hexastich 281 

Pope's Retort upon Addison 286 



THUEE MEMORABLE. MURDERS. 

A SEQUEL TO 

* MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.'* 

[1854.] 

It is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine 
and gloomy a class, that they cannot enter with genial 
sympathy into any gaiety whatever, but, least of all, 
when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of 
the extravagant. In such a case, not to sympathize is 
not to understand ; and the playfulness, which is not 
relished, becomes flat and insipid, or absolutely with- 
out meaning. Fortunately, after all such churls have 
withdrawn from my audience in high displeasure, there 
remains a large majority who are loud in acknowledg- 
ing the amusement which they have derived from a 
former paper of mine, ' On Murder considered as one 
of the Fine Arts ; ' at the same time proving the sin- 
cerity of their praise by one hesitating expression of 
censure. Repeatedly they have suggested to me, that 
perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentional, 
and forming one element in the general gaiety of the 

* See ' Miscellaneous Essays,' p. 17. 



2 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

conception, went too far. I am not myself of that 
opinion ; and I beg to remind these friendly censors, 
that it is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this 
bagatelle to graze the brink of horror, and of all that 
would in actual realization be most repulsive. The 
very excess of the extravagance, in fact, by suggesting 
to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the 
entire speculation, furnishes the surest means of dis- 
enchanting him from the horror which might else 
gather upon his feelings. Let me remind such ob- 
jectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for 
turning to account the supernumerary infants of the 
three kingdoms, which, in those days, both at Dublin 
and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, 
by cooking and eating them. This was an extrava- 
ganza, though really bolder and more coarsely practical 
than mine, which did not provoke any reproaches even 
to a dignitary of the supreme Irish church ; its own 
monstrosity was its excuse ; mere extravagance was 
felt to license and accredit the little jeu d"* esprit, 
precisely as the blank impossibilities of Lilliput, of 
Laputa, of the Yahoos, &c., had licensed those. If, 
therefore, any man thinks it worth his while to tilt 
against so mere a foam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture 
on the sesthetics of murder, I shelter myself for the 
moment under the Telamonian shield of the Dean. 
But, in reality, my own little paper may plead a 
privileged excuse for its extravagance, such as is alto- 
gether wanting to the Dean's. Nobody can pretend, 
for a moment, on behalf of the Dean, that there is any 
ordinary and natural tendency in human thoughts, 
which could ever turn to infants as articles of diet; 
under any conceivable circumstances, this would be 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 3 

felt as the most aggravated form of cannibalism — 
cannibalism applying itself to the most defenceless 
part of the species. But, on the other hand, the ten- 
dency to a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires and 
murders is universal. If you are summoned to the 
spectacle of a great fire, undoubtedly the first impulse 
is — to assist in putting it out. But that field of ex- 
ertion is very limited, and is soon filled by regular 
professional people, trained and equipped for the ser- 
vice. In the case of a fire which is operating upon 
private property, pity for a neighbor's calamity checks 
us at first in treating the affair as a scenic spectacle. 
But perhaps the fire may be confined to public build- 
ings. And in any case, after we have paid our tribute 
of regret to the affair, considered as a calamity, in- 
evitably, and without restraint, we go on to consider it 
as a stage spectacle. Exclamations of — How grand ! 
how magnificent ! arise in a sort of rapture from the 
crowd. For instance, when Drury Lane was burned 
down in the first decennium of this centuiy, the falling 
in of the roof was signalized by a mimic suicide of the 
protecting Apollo that surmounted and crested the 
centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his 
lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins 
that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the 
supporting timbers below him gave way ; a convulsive 
heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to 
raise the statue ; and then, as if on some impulse of 
despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall, but to 
throw himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down 
head foremost; and in all respects, the descent had 
the air of a voluntary act. What followed.? From 
every one of the bridges over the river, and from other 





4 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

open areas which commanded the spectacle, there 
arose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy. 
Some few years before this event, a prodigious fire 
occurred at Liverpool ; the Goree^ a vast pile of ware- 
houses close to one of the docks, was burned to the 
ground. The huge edifice, eight or nine stories high, 
and laden with most combustible goods, many thousand 
bales of cotton, wheat and oats in thousands of quar- 
ters, tar, turpentine, rum, gunpowder, &c., continued 
through many hours of darkness to feed this tremendous 
fire. To aggravate the calamity, it blew a regular gale 
of wind ; luckily for the shipping, it blew inland, that 
is, to the east ; and all the way down to Warrington, 
eighteen miles distant to the eastward, the whole air 
was illuminated by flakes of cotton, often saturated 
with rum, and by what seemed absolute worlds of 
blazing sparks, that lighted up all the upper chambers 
of the air. All the cattle lying abroad in the fields 
through a breadth of eighteen miles, were thrown into 
terror and agitation. Men, of course, read in this 
hurrying overhead of scintillating and blazing vortices, 
the annunciation of some gigantic calamity going on in 
Liverpool ; and the lamentation on that account was 
universal. But that mood of public sympathy did not 
at all interfere to suppress or even to check the 
momentary bursts of rapturous admiration, as this 
arrowy sleet of many-colored fire rode on the wings 
of hurricane, alternately through open depths of air, or 
through dark clouds overhead. 

Precisely the same treatment is applied to murders. 
After the first tribute of sorrow to those who have 
perished, but, at all events, after the personal interests. 
have been tranquillized by time, inevitably the scenical 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 5 

features (what aesthetically may be called the com- 
parative adva?itages) of the several murders are re- 
viewed and valued. One murder is compared with 
another ; and the circumstances of superiority, as, for 
example, in the incidence and effects of surprise, of 
mystery, &c., are collated and appraised. I, there- 
fore, for my extravagance, claim an inevitable and 
perpetual ground in "the spontaneous tendencies of the 
human mind when left to itself. But no one will 
pretend that any corresponding plea can be advanced 
on behalf of Sv/ift. 

In this important distinction between myself and the 
Dean, lies one reason which prompted the present writ- 
ing. A second purpose of this paper is, to make the 
reader acquainted circumstantially with three memo- 
rable cases of murder, which long ago the voice of 
amateurs has crowned with laurel, but especially 
with the two earliest of the three, viz., the immortal 
Williams' murders of 1812. The act and the actor 
are each separately in the highest degree interesting ; 
and, as forty-two years have elapsed since 1812, it can- 
not be supposed that either is known circumstantially to 
the men of the current generation. 

Never, throughout the annals of universal Christen- 
dom, has there indeed been any act of one solitary 
insulated individual, armed with power so appalling 
over the hearts of men, as that exterminating murder, 
by which, during the winter of 1812, John Williams in 
one hour, smote two houses with emptiness, extermin- 
ated all but two entire households, and asserted his own 
supremacy above all the children of Cain. It would be 
absolutely impossible adequately to describe the frenzy 
of feelings which, throughout the next fortnight, mas- 



6 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

tered the popular heart ; the mere delirium of indignant 
horror in some, the mere delirium of panic in others. 
For twelve succeeding da3/s, under some groundless 
notion that the unknown murderer had quitted London, 
the panic which had convulsed the mighty metropolis 
diffused itself all over the island. I was myself at that 
time nearly three hundred miles from London ; but 
there, and everywhere, the panic was indescribable. 
One lady, my next neighbor, whom personally I knew, 
living at the moment, during the absence of her hus- 
band, with a few servants in a very solitary house, 
never rested until she had placed eighteen doors (so she 
told me, and, indeed, satisfied me by ocular proof), each 
secured by ponderous bolts, and bars, and chains, be- 
tween her own bedroom and any intruder of human 
build. To reach her, even in her drawing-room, was 
like going, as a flag of truce, into a beleaguered for- 
tress ; at every sixth step one was stopped by a sort of 
portcullis. The panic was not confined to the rich; 
women in the humblest ranks more than once died upon 
the spot, from the shock attending some suspicious at- 
tempts at intrusion upon the part of vagrants, meditating 
probably nothing worse than a robbery, but whom the 
poor women, misled by the London newspapers, had 
fancied to be the dreadful London murderer. Mean- 
time, this solitary artist, that rested in the centre of 
London, self-supported by his own conscious grandeur, 
as a domestic Attila, or ' scourge of God ;' this man, 
that walked in darkness, and relied upon murder (as 
afterwards transpired) for bread, for clothes, for pro- 
motion in life, was silently preparing an effectual answer 
to the public journals ; and on the twelfth day after his 
inaugural murder, he advertised his presence in Lon- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 7 

don, and published to all men the absurdity of ascribing 

to him any ruralizing propensities, by striking a second 
blow, and accomplishing a second family extermination. 
Somewhat lightened was the provincial panic by this 
proof that the murderer had not condescended to sneak 
into the country, or to abandon for a moment, under 
any motive of caution or fear, the great metropolitan 
castra stativa of gigantic crime, seated for ever on the 
Thames. In fact, the great artist disdained a provincial 
reputation ; and he must have felt, as a case of ludicrous 
disproportion, the contrast between a country town or 
village, on the one hand, and, on the other, a work 
more lasting than brass — a xnjua ig aei — a murder such 
in quality as any murder that he would condescend to 
own for a work turned out from his own studio. 

Coleridge, whom I saw some months after these 
terrific murders, told me, that, for his part, though at 
the time resident in London, he had not shared in the 
prevailing panic ; him they effected only as a philoso- 
pher, and threw him into a profound reverie upon the 
tremendous power which is laid open in a moment to 
any man who can reconcile himself to the abjuration 
of all conscientious restraints, if, at the same time, 
thoroughly without fear. Not sharing in the public- 
panic, however, Coleridge did not consider that panic 
at all unreasonable ; for, as he said most truly in that 
vast metropolis there are many thousands of households, 
composed exclusively of women and children ; many 
other thousands there are who necessarily confide their 
safety, in the long evenings, to the discretion of a young 
servant girl ; and if she suffers herself to be beguiled 
by the pretence of a message from her mother, sister, 
or sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one 



8 THREE BIEMORABLE MURDERS. 

second of time, goes to wreck the security of the house. 
However, at that time, and for many months afterwards, 
the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the door 
before it was opened prevailed generally, and for a long 
time served as a record of that deep impression left 
upon London by Mr. Williams. Southey, I may add, 
entered deeply into the public feeling on this occasion, 
and said to me, within a week or two of the first mur- 
der, that it was a private event of that order which rose 
to the dignity of a national event.* But now, having 
prepared the reader to appreciate on its true scale this 
dreadful tissue of murder (which as a record belonging 
to an era that is now left forty-two years behind us, not 
one person in four of this generation can be expected 
to know correctly), let me pass to the circumstantial 
details of the affair. 

Yet, first of all, one word as to the local scene of the 
murders. Ratcliffe Highway is a public thoroughfare 
in a most chaotic quarter of eastern or nautical London ; 
and at this time (viz., in 1812), when no adequate 
police existed except the detective police of Bow Street, 
admirable for its own peculiar purposes, but utterly in- 
commensurate to the general service of the capital, it 
was a most dangerous quarter. Every third man at 
the least might be set down as a foreigner. Lascars, 
Chinese, Moors, Negroes, were met at every step. 
And apart from the manifold ruffianism, shrouded im- 
penetrably under the mixed hats and turbans of men 
whose past was untraceable to any European eye, it is 

* I am not sure whether Southey held at this time his appoiut- 
ment to the editorship of the ' Edinburgh Annual Register.' If 
he did, no doubt in the domestic section of that clu'onicle mil be 
found an excellent account of the whole. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 9 

well known that the navy (especially, in time of war, 
the commercial navy) of Christendom is the sure 
receptacle of all the murderers and ruffians whose 
crimes have given them a motive for withdrawing 
themselves for a season from the public eye. It is 
true, that few of this class are qualified to act as ' able ' 
seamen : but at all times, and especially during war, 
only a small proportion (or nucleus) of each ship's 
company consists of such men: the large majority 
being mere untutored landsmen. John Williams, how- 
ever, who had been occasionally rated as a seaman on 
board of various Indiamen, &c., was probably a very 
accomplished seaman. Pretty generally, in fact, he 
was a ready and adroit man, fertile in resources under 
all sudden difficulties, and most flexibly adapting him- 
self to all varieties of social life. Williams was a man 
of middle stature (five feet seven and a-half, to five feet 
eight inches high), slenderly built, rather thin, but wiry, 
tolerably muscular, and clear of all superfluous flesh. 
A lady, who saw him under examination (I think at the 
Thames Police Office), assured me that his hair was 
of the most extraordinary and vivid color, viz., bright 
yellow, something between an orange and lemon color. 
Williams had been in India ; chiefly in Bengal and 
Madras : but he had also been upon the Indus. Now, 
it is notorious that, in the Punjaub, horses of a high 
caste are often painted — crimson, blue, green, purple ; 
and it struck me that Williams might, for some casual 
purpose of disguise, have taken a hint from this prac- 
tice of Scinde and Lahore, so that the color might not 
have been natural. In other respects, his appearance 
was natural enough ; and, judging by a plaster cast of 
him, which I purchased in London, I should say mean, 



10 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

as regaroed his facial structure. One fact, however, 
was striking, and fell in with the impression of his 
natural tiger character, that his face wore at all times 
a bloodless ghastly pallor. 'You might imagine,' 
said my informant, 'that in his veins circulated not 
red life-blood, such as could kindle into the blush of 
shame, of wrath, of pity — but a green sap that welled 
from no human heart.' His eyes seemed frozen and 
glazed, as if their light were all converged upon some 
victim lurking in the far background. So far his ap- 
pearance might have repelled ; but, on the other hand, 
the concurrent testimony of many witnesses, and also 
the silent testimony of facts, showed that the oiliness 
and snaky insinuation of his demeanor counteracted the 
repulsiveness of his ghastly face, and amongst inex- 
perienced young women won for him a very favorable 
reception. In particular, one gentle-mannered girl, 
whom Williams had undoubtedly designed to murder, 
gave in evidence — that once, when sitting alone with 
her, he had said, ' Now, Miss R., supposing that I 
should appear about midnight at your bedside, armed 
with a carving knife, what would you say ?' To which 
the confiding girl had replied, ' Oh, Mr. Williams, if it 
was anybody else, I should be frightened. But, as soon 
as I heard your voice, I should be tranquil.' Poor 
girl ! had this outline sketch of Mr. Williams been 
filled in and realized, she would have seen something 
in the corpse-like face, and heard something in the 
sinister voice, that would have unsettled her tranquillity 
for ever. But nothing short of such dreadful experiences 
could avail to unmask Mr. John Williams. 

Into this perilous region it was that, on a Saturday 
night in December, Mr. Williams, whom we suppose to 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 11 . 

have long since made his coup d^essai, forced his way- 
through the crowded streets, bound on business. To 
say, was to do. And this night he had said to himself 
secretly, that he would execute a design which he had 
already sketched, and which, when finished, was des- 
tined on the following day to strike consternation into 
' all that mighty heart ' of London, from centre to cir- 
cumference. It was afterwards remembered that he 
had quitted his lodgings on this dark errand about 
eleven o'clock p. m. ; not that he meant to begin so 
soon : but he needed to reconnoitre. He carried his 
tools closely buttoned up under his loose roomy coat. 
It was in harmony with the general subtlety of his 
character, and his polished hatred of brutality, that by- 
universal agreement his manners were distinguished 
for exquisite suavity : the tiger's heart was masked by 
the most insinuating and snaky refinement. All his 
acquaintances afterwards described his dissimulation as 
so ready and so perfect, that if, in making his way 
through the streets, always so crowded on a Saturday 
night in neighborhoods so poor, he had accidentally 
jostled any person, he would (as they were all satisfied) 
have stopped to ofTer the most gentlemanly apologies : 
with his devilish heart brooding over the most hellish 
of purposes, he would yet have paused to express a 
benign hope that the huge mallet, buttoned up under 
his elegant surtout, with a view to the little business 
that awaited him about ninety minutes further on, had 
not inflicted any pain on the stranger with whom he 
had come into collision. Titian, I believe, but certainly 
Rubens, and perhaps Vandyke, made it a rule never to 
practise his art but in full dress — point ruffles, bag 
wig, and diamond-hilted sword; and Mr. Williams, 



]2 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

there is reason to believe, when he went out for. a 
grand compoimd massacre (in another sense, one might 
have applied to it the Oxford phrase of going out as 
Grand Compounder) , Blways assumed black silk stock- 
ings and pumps ; nor would he on any account have 
degraded his position as an artist by wearing a morn- 
ing gown. In his second great performance, it was 
particularly noticed and recorded by the one sole trem- 
bling man, who under killing agonies of fear was com- 
pelled (as the reader will find) from a secret stand to 
become the soljtary spectator of his atrocities, that Mr. 
Williams wore a long blue frock, of the very finest 
cloth, and richly lined with silk. Amongst the anec- 
dotes which circulated about him, it was also said at 
the time, that Mr. Williams employed the first of den- 
tists, and also the first of chiropodists. On no account 
would he patronize any second-rate skill. And be- 
yond a doubt, in that perilous little branch of business 
which was practised by himself, he might be regarded 
as the most aristocratic and fastidious of artists. 

But who meantime was the victim, to whose abode 
he was hurrying ? For surely he never could be so 
indiscreet as to be sailing about on a roving cruise in 
search of some chance person to murder ? Oh, no : 
he had suited himself with a victim some time before, 
viz., an old and very intimate friend. For he seems 
to have laid it down as a maxim — that the best person 
to murder was a friend ; and, in default of a friend, 
which is an article one cannot always command, an 
acquaintance : because, in either case, on first ap- 
proaching his subject, suspicion would be disarmed : 
whereas a stranger might take alarm, and find in the 
very countenance of his murderer elect a warning 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 13 

summons to place himself on guard. However, in 
the present case, his destined victim was supposed to 
unite both characters : originally he had been a friend ; 
but subsequently, on good cause arising, he had be- 
come an enemy. Or more probably, as others said, 
the feelings had long smce languished which gave life 
to either relation of friendship or of enmity. Marr 
was the name of that unhappy man, who (whether in 
the character of friend or enemy) had been selected 
for the subject of this present Saturday night's per- 
formance. And the story current at that time about 
the connection between Williams and Marr, having 
(whether true or not true) never been contradicted 
upon authority, was, that they sailed in the same India- 
man to Calcutta ; that they had quarrelled when at 
sea ; but another version of the story said — no : they 
had quarrelled after returning from sea ; and the sub- 
ject of their quarrel was Mrs. Marr, a very pretty 
young woman, for whose favor they had been rival 
candidates, and at one time with most bitter enmity 
towards each other. Some circumstances give a color 
of probability to this story. Otherwise it has some- 
times happened, on occasion of a murder not suffi- 
ciently accounted for, that, from pure goodness of 
heart intolerant of a mere sordid motive for a striking 
murder, some person has forged, and the public has 
accredited, a story representing the murderer as having 
moved under some loftier excitement : and in this 
case the public, too much shocked at the idea of Will- 
iams having on the single motive of gain consummated 
so complex a tragedy, welcomed the tale which repre- 
sented him as governed by deadly malice, growing out 
of the more impassioned and noble rivalry for the 



14 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

favor of a woman. The case remains in some degree 
doubtful ; but, certainly, the probability is, that Mrs. 
Marr had been the true cause, the causa teterrima, of 
the feud between the men. Meantime, the minutes are 
numbered, the sands of the hour-glass are running out, 
that measure the duration of this feud upon earth. 
This night it shall cease. To-morrow is the day which 
in England they call Sunday, which in Scotland they 
call by the Judaic name of ' Sabbath.' To both na- 
tions, under different names, the day has the same 
functions ; to both it is a day of rest. For thee also, 
Marr, it shall be a day of rest ; so is it written ; thou, 
too, young Marr, shalt find rest — thou, and thy house- 
hold, and the stranger that is within thy gates. But 
that rest must be in the world which lies beyond the 
grave. On this side the grave ye have all slept your 
final sleep. 

The night was one of exceeding darkness ; and in 
this humble quarter of London, whatever the night 
happened to be, light or dark, quiet or stormy, all shops 
were kept open on Saturday nights until twelve o'clock, 
at the least, and many for half an hour longer. There 
was no rigorous and pedantic Jewish superstition about 
the exact limits of Sunday. At the very worst, the 
Sunday stretched over from one o'clock, a. m. of one 
day, up to eight o'clock A. M. of the next, making a 
clear circuit of thirty-one hours. This, surely, was 
long enough. Marr, on this particular Saturday night, 
would be content if it were even shorter, provided it 
would come more quickly, for he has been toiling 
through sixteen hours behind his counter. Marr's 
position in life was this : he kept a little hosier's shop, 
and had invested in his stock and the fittings of his 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 15 

shop about .^180. Like all men engaged in trade, he 
suffered some anxieties. He was a new beginner ; but, 
already, bad debts had alarmed him ; and bills were 
coming to maturity that were not likely to be met by 
commensurate sales. Yet, constitutionally, he was a 
sanguine hoper. At this time he was a stout, fresh- 
colored young man of twenty-seven ; in some slight 
degree uneasy from his commercial prospects, but still 
cheerful, and anticipating — (how vainly !) — that for 
this night, and the next night, at least, he will rest his 
wearied head and his cares upon the faithful bosom of 
his sweet lovely young wife. The household of Marr, 
consisting of five persons, is as follows : „ First, there is 
himself, who, if he should happen to be ruined, in a 
limited commercial sense, has energy enough to jump 
up again, like a pyramid of fire, and soar high above 
ruin many times repeated. Yes, poor Marr, so it might 
be, if thou wert left to thy native energies unmolested ; 
but even now there stands on the other side of the 
street one born of hell, who puts his peremptory nega- 
tive on all these flattering prospects. Second in the 
list of his household, stands his pretty and amiable 
wife, who is happy after the fashion of youthful wives, 
for she is only twenty-two, and anxious (if at all) only 
on account of her darling infant. For, thirdly, there 
is in a cradle, not quite nine feet below the street, 
viz., in a warm, cosy kitchen, and rocked at inter- 
vals by the young mother, a baby eight months old. 
Nineteen months have Marr and herself been married ; 
and this is their first-born child. Grieve not for this 
child, that it must keep the deep rest of Sunday in 
some other world ; for wherefore should an orphan, 
steeped to the lips in poverty, when once bereaved 



16 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

of father and mother, linger upon an alien and mur- 
derous earth ? Fourthl}^, there is a stoutish boy, an 
apprentice, say thirteen years old ; a Devonshire boy, 
with handsome features, such as most Devonshire 
youths have ; * satisfied with his place ; not over- 
worked ; treated kindly, and aware that he was treated 
kindly, by his master and mistress. Fifthly, and lastly, 
bringing up the rear of this quiet household, is a ser- 
vant girl, a grown-up young woman ; and she, being 
particularly kind-hearted, occupied (as often happens 
in families of humble pretensions as to rank) a sort of 
sisterly place in her relation to her mistress. A great 
democratic change is at this very time (1854), and has 
been for twenty years, passing over British society. 
Multitudes of persons are becoming ashamed of say- 
ing, ' my master,' or ' my mistress : ' the term now in 
the slow process of superseding it is, ' my employer.' 
Now, in the United States, such an expression of 
democratic hauteur, though disagreeable as. a needless 
proclamation of independence which nobody is dis- 
puting, leaves, however, no lasting bad effect. For 
the domestic ' helps ' are pretty generally in a state of 
transition so sure and so rapid to the headship of 
domestic establishments belonging to themselves, that 
in effect they are but ignoring, for the present 
moment, a relation which would at any rate dissolve 
itself in a year or two. But in England, where no 

* An artist told me in this year, 1812, that having accidentally 
seen a native Deyonsliire regiment (either volunteers or militia), 
nine hundred strong, marching past a station at which he had 
posted himself, he did not observe a dozen men that would not 
have been described in common parlance as ' good looking.' 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 17 

such resources exist of everlasting surplus lands, the 
tendency of the change is painful. It carries with it 
a sullen and a coarse expresion of immunity from a 
yoke which was in any case a light one, and often a 
benign one. In some other place I will illustrate my 
meaning. Here, apparently, in Mrs. Marr's service, 
the principle concerned illustrated itself practically. 
Mary, the female servant, felt a sincere and unaffected 
respect for a mistress whom she saw so steadily occu- 
pied with her domestic duties, and who, though so 
young, and invested with some slight authority, never 
exerted it capriciously, or even showed it at all con- 
spiciously. According to the testimony of all the 
neighbors, she treated her mistress with a shade of 
unobtrusive respect on the one hand, and yet was 
eager to relieve her, whenever that was possible, from 
the weight of her maternal duties, with the cheerful 
voluntary service of a sister. 

To this young woman it was, that, suddenly, within 
three or four minutes of midnight, Marr called aloud 
from the head of the stairs — directing her to go out 
and purchase some oysters for the family supper. 
Upon what slender accidents hang oftentimes solemn 
lifelong results ! Marr occupied in the concerns of his 
shop, Mrs. Marr occupied with some little ailment and 
restlessness of her baby, had both forgotten the affair 
of supper; the time was now narrowing every mo- 
ment, as regarded any variety of choice ; and oysters 
were perhaps ordered as the likeliest article to be had 
at all, after twelve o'clock should have struck. And 
yet, upon this trivial circumstance depended Mary's 
life. Flad she been sent abroad for supper at the 
ordinary time of ten or eleven o'clock, it is almost 
2 



18 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

certain that she, the solitary member of the household 
who escaped from the exterminating tragedy, would 
not have escaped ; too surely she would have shared 
the general fate. It had now become necessary to be 
quick. Hastily, therefore, receiving money from Marr 
with a basket in her hand, but unbonneted, Mary trip- 
ped out of the shop. It became afterwards, on recol- 
lection, a heart-chilling remembrance to herself — 
that, precisely as she emerged from the shop-door, she 
noticed, on the opposite side of the street, by the light 
of the lamps, a man's figure ; stationary at the instant, 
but in the next instant slowly moving. This was 
Williams ; as a little incident, either just before or just 
after (at present it is impossible to say which), suffi- 
ciently proved. Now, when one considers the inevita- 
ble hurry and trepidation of Mary under the circum- 
stances stated, time barely sufficing for any chance of 
executing her errand, it becomes evident that she must 
have connected some deep feeling of mysterious un- 
easiness with the movements of this unknown man ; 
else, assuredly, she would not have found her attention 
disposable for such a case. Thus far, she herself 
threw some little light upon what it might be that, semi- 
consciously, was then passing through her mind ; she 
said, that, notwithstanding the darkness, which would 
not permit her to trace the man's features, or to ascertain 
the exact direction of his eyes, it yet struck her, that 
from his carriage when in motion, and from the ap- 
parent inclination of his person, he must be looking at 
No. 29. 

The little incident which I have alluded to as con- 
firming Mary's belief was, that, at some period not 
veiy far from midnight, the watchman had specially 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 19 

noticed this stranger ; he had observed him continu- 
ally peeping into the window of Marr's shop ; and 
had thought this act, connected with the man's appear- 
ance, so suspicious, that he stepped into Marr's shop, 
and communicated what he had seen. This fact he 
afterwards stated before the magistrates ; and he 
added, that subsequently, viz., a few minutes after 
twelve (eight or ten minutes, probably, after the de- 
parture of Mary), he (the watchman), when re-entering 
upon his ordinary half-hourly beat, was requested by 
Marr to assist him in closing the shutters. Here they 
had a final communicatio^ with each other ; and the 
watchman mentioned to Marr that the mysterious 
stranger had now apparently taken himself off; for 
that he had not been visible since the first communica- 
tion made to Marr by the watchman. There is little 
doubt that Williams had observed the watchman's visit 
to Marr, and had thus had his attention seasonably 
drawn to the indiscretion of his own demeanor ; so 
that the warning, given unavailingly to Marr, had been 
turned to account by Williams. There can be still 
less doubt, that the bloodhound had commenced his 
work within one minute of the watchman's assisting 
Marr to put up his shutters. And on the following 
consideration: — that which prevented Williams from 
commencing even earlier, was the exposure of the 
shop's whole interior to the gaze of street passengers. 
It was indispensable that the shutters should be accu- 
rately closed before Williams could safely get to work. 
But, as soon as ever this preliminary precaution had 
been completed, once having secured that concealment 
from the public eye it then became of still greater 
importance not to lose a moment by delay, than pre- 



20 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

viously it had been not to hazard any thing by precipi- 
tance. For all depended upon going in before Marr 
should have locked the door. On any other mode of 
effecting an entrance (as, for instance, by waiting for 
the return of Mary, and making his entrance simul- 
taneously with her), it will be seen that Williams must 
have forfeited that particular advantage which mute 
facts, when read into their true construction, will soon 
show the reader that he must have employed. Williams 
waited, of necessity, for the sound of the watchman's 
retreating steps ; waited, perhaps, for thirty seconds ; 
but when that danger was past, the next danger was, 
lest Marr should lock the door ; one turn of the key, 
and the murderer would have been locked out. In, 
therefore, he bolted, and by a dexterous movement of. 
his left hand, no doubt, turned the key, without letting 
Marr perceive this fatal stratagem. It is really won- 
derful and most interesting to pursue the successive 
steps of this monster, and to notice the absolute cer- 
tainty with which the silent hieroglyphics of the case 
betray to us the whole process and movements of the 
bloody drama, not less surely and fully than if we 
had been ourselves hidden in Marr's shop, or had 
looked down from the heavens of mercy upon this 
hell-kite, that knew not what mercy meant. That he 
had concealed from Marr his trick, secret and rapid, 
upon the lock, is evident ; because else, Marr would 
instantly have taken the alarm, especially after what 
the watchman had communicated. But it will soon 
be seen that Marr had not been alarmed. In reality, 
towards the full success of Williams, it was important, 
in the last degree, to intercept and forestall any yell 
or shout of agony from Marr. Such an outcry, and 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 21 

in a situation so slenderly fenced off from the street, 
viz., by walls the very thinnest, makes itself heard 
outside pretty nearly as well as if it were uttered in 
the street. Such an outcry it was indispensable to 
stifle. It was stifled ; and the reader will soon under- 
stand how. Meantime, at this point, let us leave the 
murderer alone with his victims. For fifty minutes 
let him work his pleasure. The front-door, as we 
know, is now fastened against all help. Help there 
is none. Let us, therefore, in vision, attach ourselves 
to Mary ; and, when all is over, let us come back 
with her, again raise the curtain, and read the dread- 
ful record of all that has passed in her absence. 

The poor girl, uneasy in her mind to an extent that 
she could but half understand, roamed up and down in 
search of an oyster shop ; and finding none that was 
still open, within any circuit that her ordinary experi- 
ence had made her acquainted with, she fancied it best 
to try the chances of some remoter district. Lights she 
saw gleaming or twinkling at a distance, that still 
tempted her onwards; and thus, amongst unknown 
streets poorly lighted,* and on a night of peculiar dark- 
ness, and in a region of London where ferocious tumults 
were continually turning her out of what seemed to be 
the direct course, naturally she got bewildered. The 
purpose with which she started, had by this time become 
hopeless. Nothing remained for her now but to retrace 

* I do not remember, chronologically, the history of gas-lights. 
But in London, long after Mr. Winsor had shown the value of 
gas-lighting, and its applicability to street purposes, various dis- 
tricts were prevented, for many years, from resorting to the new 
system, in consequence of old contracts with oil-dealers, subsisting 
through long terms of years. 



22 THREE MEMORABLE BIURDERS. 

her steps. But this was difficult ; for she was afraid to 
ask directions from chance passengers, whose appear- 
ance the darkness prevented her from reconnoitring. 
At length by his lantern she recognized a watchman ; 
through him she was guided into the right road ; and in 
ten minutes more, she found herself back at the door 
of No. 29, in RatclifTe Highway. But by this time she 
felt satisfied that she must have been absent for fifty or 
sixty minutes ; indeed, she had heard, at a distance, 
the cry of past one o'^dock, which, commencing a few 
seconds after one, lasted intermittingly for ten or thirteen 
minutes. 

In the tumult of agonizing thoughts that very soon 
surprised her, naturally it became hard for her to recall 
distinctly the whole succession of doubts, and jealousies, 
and shadowy misgivings that soon opened upon her. 
But, so far as could be collected, she had not in the 
first moment of reaching home noticed anything deci- 
sively alarming. In very many chies bells are the 
main instruments for communicating between the street 
and the interior of houses : but in London knockers 
prevail. At Marr's there was both a knocker and a 
bell. Mary rang, and at the same time very gently 
knocked. She had no fear of disturbing her master or 
mistress ; them she made sure of finding still up. Her 
anxiety was for the baby, who being disturbed, might 
again rob her mistress of a night's rest. And she well 
knew that, with three people all anxiously awaiting her 
return, and by this time, perhaps, seriously uneasy at 
her delay, the least audible whisper from herself would 
in a moment bring one of them to the door. Yet how 
is this ? To her astonishment, but with the astonish- 
ment came creeping over her an icy horror, no stir nor 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 23 

murmur was heard ascending from the kitchen. At 
this moment came , back upon her, with shuddering 
anguish, the indistinct image of the stranger in the loose 
dark coat, whom she had seen steaUng along under the 
shadowy lamp-light, and too certainly watching her 
master's motions : keenly she now reproached herself 
that, under whatever stress of hurry, she had not ac- 
quainted Mr. Marr with the suspicious appearances. 
Poor girl ! she did not then know that, if this commu- 
nication could have availed to put Marr upon his guard, 
it had reached him from another quarter ; so that her 
own omission, which had in reality arisen under her 
hurry to execute her master's commission, could not be 
charged with any bad consequences. But all such 
reflections this way or that were swallowed up at this 
point in over-mastering panic. That her double sum- 
mons could have been unnoticed — this solitary fact in 
one moment made a revelation of horror. One person 
might have fallen asleep, but two — but three — that 
was a mere impossibility. And even supposing all 
three together with the baby locked in sleep, still how 
unaccountable was this utter — utter silence! Most 
naturally at this moment something like hysterical 
horror overshadowed the poor girl, and now at last she 
rang the bell with the violence that belongs to sickening 
terror. This done, she paused : self-command enough 
she still retained, though fast and fast it was slipping 
away from her, to bethink herself — that, if any over- 
whelming accident had compelled both Marr and his 
apprentice-boy to leave the house in order to summon 
surgical aid from opposite quarters — a thing barely 
supposable — still, even in that case Mrs. Marr and her 
infant would be left ; and some murmuring reply, under 



24 THREE ME.^IORABLE MURDERS. 

any extremity, would be elicited from the poor mother. 
To pause, therefore, to impose stern silence upon her- 
self, so as to leave room for the possible answer to this 
final appeal, became a duty of spasmodic effort. Listen, 
therefore, poor trembling heart ; listen, and for twenty 
seconds be still as death. Still as death she was : and 
during that dreadful stillness, when she hushed her 
breath that she might listen, occurred an incident of 
killing fear, that to her dying day would never cease to 
renew its echoes in her ear. She, Mary, the poor 
trembling girl, checking and overruling herself by a 
final effort, that she might leave full opening for her 
dear young mistress's answer to her own last frantic 
appeal, heard at last and most distinctly a sound within 
the house. Yes, now bey-ond a doubt there is coming 
an answer to her summons. What was it ? On the 
stairs, not the stairs that led downwards to the kitchen, 
but the stairs that led upwards to the single story of 
bed-chambers above, was heard a creaking sound. Next 
was heard most distinctly a footfall : one, two, three, 
four, five stairs were slowly and distinctly descended. 
Then the dreadful footsteps were heard advancing along 
the little narrow passage to the door. The steps — oh 
heavens ! whose steps ? — have paused at the door. 
The very breathing can be heard of that dreadful being, 
who has silenced all breathing except his own in the 
house. There is but a door between him and Mary. 
What is he doing on the other side of the door ? A 
cautious step, a stealthy step it was that came down the 
stairs, then paced along the little narrow passage — 
narrow as a coffin — till at last the step pauses at the 
door. How hard the fellow breathes ! He, the soli- 
tary murderer, is on one side the door j Mary is on the 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 25 

Other side. Now, suppose that he should suddenly- 
open the door, and that incautiously in the dark Mary- 
should rush in, and find herself in the arms of the mur- 
derer. Thus far the case is a possible one — that to a 
certainty, had this little trick been tried immediately 
upon Mary's return, it would have succeeded ; had the 
door been opened suddenly upon her first tingle-tingle, 
headlong she would have tumbled in, and perished. 
But now Mary is upon her guard. The unknown mur- 
derer and she have both their lips upon the door, 
listening, breathing hard ; but luckily they are on 
different sides of the door ; and upon the least indication 
of unlocking or unlatching, she would have recoiled 
into the asylum of general darkness. 

What was the murderer's meaning in coming along 
the passage to the front door ? The meaning was this : 
separately, as an individual, Mary was worth nothing 
at all to him. But, considered as a member of a house- 
hold, she had this value, viz., that she, if caught and 
murdered, perfected and rounded the desolation of the 
house. The case being reported, as reported it would 
be all over Christendom, led the imagination captive. 
The whole covey of victims was thus netted ; the house- 
hold ruin was thus full and orbicular ; and m that pro- 
portion the tendency of men and women, flutter as they 
might, would be helplessly and hopelessly to sink into 
the all-conquering hands of the mighty murderer. He 
had but to say — my testimonials are dated from No. 
29 Ratcliffe Highway, and the poor vanquished imagi- 
nation sank powerless before the fascinating rattlesnake 
eye of the murderer. There is not a doubt that the 
motive of the murderer for standing on the inner side 
3 



26 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

of Marr's front-door, whilst Mary stood on the outside, 
was — a hope that, if he quietly opened the door, 
whisperingly counterfeiting Marr's voice, and saying, 
What made you stay so long ? possibly she might have 
been inveigled. He was wrong; the time was past 
for that ; Mary was now maniacally awake ; she began 
now to ring the bell and to ply the knocker with unin- 
termitting violence. And the natural consequence was, 
that the next door neighbor, who had recently gone to 
bed and instantly fallen asleep, was roused ; and by the 
incessant violence of the ringing and the knocking, 
which now obeyed a delirious and uncontrollable im- 
pulse in Mary, he became sensible that some very 
dreadful event must be at the root of so clamorous an 
uproar. To rise, to throw up the sash, to demand 
angrily the cause of this unseasonable tumult, was the 
work of a moment. The poor girl remained sufficiently 
mistress of herself rapidly to explain the circumstance 
of her own absence for an hour ; her belief that Mr. 
and Mrs. Marr's family had all been murdered in the 
interval ; and that at this very moment the murderer 
was in the house. 

The person to whom she addressed this statement 
was a pawnbroker; and a thoroughly brave man he 
must have been ; for it was a perilous undertaking, 
merely as a trial of physical strength, singly to face a 
mysterious assassin, who had apparently signalized his 
prowess by a triumph so comprehensive. But, again, 
for the imagination it required an effort of self-conquest 
to rush headlong into the presence of one invested with 
a cloud of mystery, whose nation, age, motives, were 
all alike unknown. Rarely on any field of battle has 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 27 

a soldier been called upon to face so complex a 
danger. For if the entire family of his neighbor Marr 
had been exterminated,- were this indeed true, such a 
scale of bloodshed would seem to argue that there 
must have been two persons as the perpetrators ; or 
if one singly had accomplished such a ruin, in that 
case how colossal must have been his audacity ! proba- 
bly, also, his skill and animal power ! Moreover, the 
unknown , enemy (whether single or double) would, 
doubtless, be elaborately armed. Yet, under all these 
disadvantages, did this fearless man rush at once to the 
field of butchery in his neighbor's house. Waiting 
only to draw on his trousers, and to arm himself with 
the kitchen poker, he went down into his own little 
back-yard. On this mode of approach, he would have 
a chance of intercepting the murderer ; whereas from 
the front there would be no such chance ; and there 
would also be considerable delay in the process of 
breaking open the door. A brick wall, nine or ten 
feet high, divided his own back premises from- those of 
Marr. Over this he vaulted ; and at the moment when 
he was recalling himself to the necessity of going back 
for a candle, he suddenly perceived a feeble ray of 
light already glimmering on some part of Marr's 
premises. Marr's back-door stood wide open. Proba- 
bly the murderer had passed through it one half minute 
before. Rapidly the brave man passed onwards to 
the shop, and there beheld the carnage of the night 
stretched out on the floor, and the narrow premises so 
floated with gore, that it was hardly possible to escape 
the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the 
front-door. In the lock of the door still remained the 



28 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

key which had given to the unknown murderer so 
fatal an advantage over his victims. By this time, the 
heart-shaking news involved in the outcries of Mary 
(to whom it occurred that by possibility some one out 
of so many victims might still be within the reach of 
medical aid, but that all would depend upon speed) 
had availed, even at that late hour, to gather a small 
mob about the house. The pawnbroker threw open 
the door. One or two watchmen headed the crowd ; 
but the soul-harrowing spectacle checked them, and 
impressed sudden silence upon their voices, previously 
so loud. The tragic drama read aloud its own history, 
and the succession of its several steps — few and 
summary. The murderer was as yet altogether un- 
known ; not even suspected. But there were reasons 
for thinking that he must have been a person familiarly 
known to Marr. He had entered the shop by opening 
the door after it had been closed by Marr. But it was 
justly argued — that, after the caution conveyed to 
Marr by the watchman, the appearance of any stranger 
in the shop at that hour, and in so dangerous a neigh- 
borhood, and entering by so irregular and suspicious a 
course, (i. e., walking in after the door had been 
closed, and after the closing of the shutters had cut 
off all open communication with the street), would 
naturally have roused Marr to an attitude of vigilance 
and self-defence. Any indication, therefore, that Marr 
had not been so roused, would argue to a certainty 
that something had occurred to neutralize this alarm, 
and fatally to disarm the prudent jealousies of Marr. 
But this ' something ' could only have lain in one 
simple fact, viz., that the person of the murderer was 
familiarly known to Marr as that of an ordinary and 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 29 

unsuspected acquaintance. This being presupposed as 
the key to all the rest, the whole course and evolution 
of the subsequent drama becomes clear as daylight. 
The murderer, it is evident, had opened gently, and 
again closed behind him with equal gentleness, the 
street-door. He had then advanced to the little coun- 
ter, all the while exchanging the ordinary salutation 
of an old acquaintance with the unsuspecting Marr. 
Having reached the counter, he would then ask Marr 
for a pair of unbleached cotton socks. In a shop so 
small as Marr's, there could be no great latitude of 
choice for disposing of the different commodities. The 
arrangement of these had no doubt become familiar to 
the murderer ; and he had already ascertained that, in 
order to reach down the particular parcel wanted at 
present, Marr would find it requisite to face round to 
the rear, and, at the same moment, to raise his eyes 
and his hands to a level eighteen inches above his own 
head. This movement placed him in the most dis- 
advantageous possible position with regard to the mur- 
derer, who now, at the instant when Marr's hands and 
eyes were embarrassed, and the back of his head fully 
exposed, suddenly from below his large surtout, had 
unslung a heavy ship-carpenter's mallet, and, with 
one solitary blow, had so thoroughly stunned his 
victim, as to leave him incapable of resistance. The 
whole position of Marr told its own tale. He had 
collapsed naturally behind the counter, with his hands 
so occupied as to confirm the whole outline of the 
affair as I have here suggested it. Probable enough 
it is that the veiy first blow, the first indication of 
treachery that reached Marr, would also be the last 
blow as regarded the abolition of consciousness. The 



30 THREE MEBIORABLE MURDERS. 

murderer's plan and rationale of murder started syste- 
matically from this infliction of apoplexy, or at least 
of a stunning sufficient to insure a long loss of con- 
sciousness. This opening step placed the murderer at 
his ease. But still, as returning sense might constantly 
have led to the fullest exposures, it was his settled 
practice, by way of consummation, to cut the throat. 
To one invariable type all the murders on this occasion 
conformed : the skull was first shattered ; this step 
secured the murderer from instant retaliation ; and 
then, by way of locking up all into eternal silence, 
uniformly the throat was cut. The rest of the circum- 
stances, as self-revealed, were these. The fall of 
Marr might, probably enough, cause a dull, confused 
sound of a scuffle, and the more so, as it could not 
now be confounded with any street uproar — the shop- 
door being shut. It is more probable, however, that 
the signal for the alarm passing down to the kitchen, 
would arise when the murderer proceeded to cut 
Marr's throat. The very confined situation behind the 
counter would render it impossible, under the critical 
hurry of the case, to expose the throat broadly; the 
horrid scene would proceed by partial and interrupted 
cuts ; deep groans would arise ; and then would come 
the rush up-stairs. Against this, as the only dangerous 
stage in the transaction, the murderer would have 
specially prepared. Mrs. Marr and the apprentice- 
boy, both young and active, would make, of course, 
for the street door ; had Mary been at home, and three 
persons at once had combined to distract the purposes 
of the murderer, it is barely possible that one of them 
would have succeeded in reaching the street. But -the 
dreadful swing of the heavy mallet intercepted both 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 31 

the boy and his mistress before they could reach the 
door. Each of them lay stretched out on the centre 
of the shop floor ; and the very moment that this dis- 
abling was accomplished, the accursed hound was 
down upon their throats with his razor. The fact is, 
that, in the mere blindness of pity for poor Marr, on 
hearing his groans, Mrs. Marr had lost sight of her 
obvious policy ; she and the boy ought to have made 
for the back door ; the alarm would thus have been 
given in the open air; which, of itself, was a great 
point ; and several means of distracting the murderer's 
attention offered upon that course, which the ex- 
treme limitation of the shop denied to them upon 
the other. 

Vain would be all attempts to convey the horror 
which thrilled the gathering spectators of this piteous 
tragedy. It was known to the crowd that one person 
had, by some accident, escaped the general massacre : 
but she was now speechless, and probably delirious ; so 
that, in compassion for her pitiable situation, one female 
neighbor had carried her away, and put her to bed. 
Hence it had happened, for a longer space of time 
than could else have been possible, that no person pres- 
ent was sufficiently acquainted with the Marrs to be 
aware of the little infant ; for the bold pawnbroker had 
gone off to make a communication to the coroner ; and 
another neighbor to lodge some evidence which he 
thought urgent at a neighboring police-office. Sudden- 
ly some person appeared amongst the crowd who was 
aware that the murdered parents had a young infant ; 
this would be found either below-stairs, or in one of 
the bedrooms above. Immediately a stream of people 
poured down into the kitchen, where at once they saw 



32 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

the cradle — but with the bedclothes in a state of inde- 
scribable confusion. On disentangling these, pools of 
blood became visible ; and the next ominous sign was, 
that the hood of the cradle had been smashed to pieces. 
It became evident that the wretch had found himself 
doubly embarrassed — first, by the arched hood at the 
head of the cradle, which, accordingly, he had beat into 
a ruin with his mallet, and secondly, by the gathering 
of the blankets and pillows about the baby's head. 
The free play of his blows had thus been baffled. 
And he had therefore finished the scene by applying 
his razor to the throat of the little innocent; after 
which, with no apparent purpose, as though he had 
become confused by the spectacle of his own atroci- 
ties, he had busied himself in piling the clothes elabo- 
rately over the child's corpse. This incident undeniably 
gave the character of a vindictive proceeding to the 
whole affair, and so far confirmed the current rumor 
that the quarrel between Williams and Marr had 
originated in rivalship. One writer, indeed, alleged 
that the murderer might have found it necessary for 
his own safety to extinguish the crying of the child ; 
but it was justly replied, that a child only eight months 
old could not have cried under any sense of the trag- 
edy proceeding, but simply in its ordinary way for the 
absence of its mother ; and such a cry, even if audible 
at all out of the house, must have been precisely what 
the neighbors were hearing constantly, so that it could 
have drawn no special attention, nor suggested any 
reasonable alarm to the murderer. No one incident, 
indeed, throughout the whole tissue of atrocities, so 
much envenomed the popular fury against the un- 
known ruffian, as this useless butchery of the infant. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 33 

Naturally, on the Sunday morning that dawned four 
or five hours later, the case was too full of horror not 
to diffuse itself in all directions; but I have no reason 
to think that it crept into any one of the numerous 
Sunday papers. In the regular course, any ordinary 
occurrence, not occurring, or not transpiring until 
fifteen minutes after 1 a. m. on a Sunday morning, 
would first reach the public ear through the Monday 
editions of the Sunday papers, and the regular morning 
papers of the Monday. But, if such were the course 
pursued on this occasion, never can there have been 
a more signal oversight. For it is certain, that to have 
met the public demand for details on the Sunday, which 
might so easily have been done by cancelling a couple 
of dull columns, and substituting a circumstantial nar- 
rative, for which the pawnbroker and the watchman 
could have furnished the materials, would have made a 
small fortune. By proper handbills dispersed through 
all quarters of the infinite metropolis, two hundred and 
fifty thousand extra copies might have been sold ; that 
is, by any journal that should have collected exclusive 
materials, meeting the public excitement, everywhere 
stirred to the centre by flying rumors, and everywhere 
burning for ampler information. On the Sunday 
se'ennight (Sunday the octave from the event), took 
place the funeral of the Marrs ; in the first cofRn was 
placed Marr ; in the second Mrs. Marr, and the baby 
in her arms ; in the third the apprentice boy. They 
were buried side by side ; and thirty thousand laboring 
people followed the funeral procession, with horror and 
grief written in their countenances. 

As yet no whisper was astir that indicated, even 
conjecturally, the hideous author of these ruins — this 



34 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

patron of grave-diggers. Had as much been known on 
this Sunday of the funeral concerning that person as 
became known universally six days later, the people 
would have gone right. from the churchyard to the mur- 
derer's lodgings, and (brooking no delay) would have 
torn him limb from limb. As yet, however, in mere 
default of any object on whom reasonable suspicion 
could settle, the public wrath was compelled to suspend 
itself. Else, far indeed from showing any tendency to 
subside, the public emotion strengthened every day 
conspicuously, as the reverberation of the shock began 
to travel back from the provinces to the capital. On 
every great road in the kingdom, continual arrests were 
made of vagrants and ' trampers,' who could give no 
satisfactory account of themselves, or whose appear- 
ance in any respect answered to the imperfect descrip- 
tion of Williams furnished by the watchman. 

With this mighty tide of pity and indignation point- 
ing backwards to the dreadful past, there mingled also 
in the thoughts of reflecting persons an under-current 
of fearful expectation for the immediate future. ' The 
earthquake,' to quote a fragment from a striking pas- 
sage in Wordsworth — 

* The earthquake is not satisfied at once.' 

All perils, specially malignant, are recurrent. A 
murderer, who is such by passion and by a wolfish 
craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural luxury, 
cannot relapse into inertia. Such a man, even more 
than the Alpine chamois hunter, comes to crave the 
dangers and the hairbreadth escapes of his trade, as a 
condiment for seasoning the insipid monotonies of daily 
life. But, apart from the hellish instincts that might 



THREE MEMORABLE BIURDERS. 35 

too surely be relied on for renewed atrocities, it was 
clear that tlie murderer of the Marrs, wheresoever 
lurking, must be a needy man ; and a needy man of 
that class least likely to seek or to find resources in 
honorable modes of industry; for which, equally by 
haughty disgust and by disuse of the appropriate habits, 
men of violence are specially disqualified. Were it, 
therefore, merely for a livelihood, the murderer whom 
all hearts were yearning to decipher, might be expected 
to make his resurrection on some stage of horror, after 
a reasonable interval. Even in the Marr murder, grant- 
ing that it had been governed chiefly by cruel and 
vindictive impulses, it was still clear that the desire 
of booty had co-operated with such feelings. Equally 
clear it was that this desire must have been disap- 
pointed : excepting the trivial sum reserved by Marr 
for the week's expenditure, the murderer found, doubt- 
less, little or nothing that he could turn to account. 
Two guineas, perhaps, would be the outside of what 
he had obtained in the way of booty. A week or so 
would see the end of that. The conviction, therefore, 
of all people was, that in a month or two, when the 
fever of excitement might a little have cooled down, 
or have been superseded by other topics of fresher 
interest, so that the newborn vigilance of household life 
would have had time to relax, some new murder, 
equally appalling, might be counted upon. 

Such was the public expectation. Let the reader 
then figure to himself the pure frenzy of horror when 
in this hush of expectation, looking, indeed, and waiting 
for the unknown arm to strike once more, but not be- 
lieving that any audacity could be equal to such an 
attempt as yet, whilst all eyes were watching, suddenly, 



36 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

on the twelfth night from the Marr murder, a second 
case of the same mysterious nature, a murder on the 
same exterminating plan was perpetrated in the very 
same neighborhood. It was on the Thursday next but 
one succeeding to the Marr murder that this second 
atrocity took place ; and many people thought at the 
time, that in its dramatic features of thrilling interest, 
this second case even went beyond the first. The 
family which suffered in this instance was that of a Mr. 
Williamson ; and the house was situated, if not abso- 
lutely i?i Ratcliffe Highway, at any rate immediately 
round the corner of some secondary street, running at 
right angles to this public thoroughfare. Mr. William- 
son was a well-known and respectable man, long settled 
in that district ; he was supposed to be rich ; and more 
with a view to the employment furnished by such a 
calling, than with much anxiety for further accumula- 
tions, he kept a sort of tavern ; which, in this respect, 
might be considered on an old patriarchal footing — 
that, although people of considerable property resorted 
to the house in the evenings, no kind of anxious sepa- 
ration was maintained between them and the other 
visiters from the class of artisans or common laborers. 
Anybody who conducted himself with propriety was 
free to take a seat, and call for any liquor that he might 
prefer. And thus the society was pretty miscellaneous ; 
in part stationary, but in some proportion fluctuating. 
The household consisted of the following five per- 
sons : — 1. Mr. Williamson, its head, who was an old 
man above seventy, and was well fitted for his situation, 
being civil, and not at all morose, but, at the same 
time, firm in maintaining order ; 2. Mrs. Williamson, 
his wife, about ten years younger than himself; 3. a 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 



37 



little grand-daughter, about nine years old ; 4. a house- 
maid, who was nearly forty years old ; 5. a young 
journeyman, aged about twenty-six, belonging to some 
manufacturing establishment (of what class I have for- 
gotten) ; neither do I remember of what nation he 
was. It was the established rule at Mr. Williamson's, 
that, exactly as the clock struck eleven, all the com- 
pany, without favor or exception, moved off. That 
was one of the customs by which, in so stormy a dis- 
trict, Mr. Williamson had found it possible to keep his 
house free from brawls. On the present Thursday 
night everything had gone on as usual, except for one 
slight shadow of suspicion, which had caught the at- 
tention of more persons than one. Perliaps at a less 
agitating time it would hardly have been noticed ; but 
now, when the first question and the last in all social 
meetings turned upon the Marrs, and their unknown 
murderer, it was a circumstance naturally fitted to 
cause some uneasiness, that a stranger, of sinister ap- 
pearance, in a wide surtout, had flitted in and out of 
the room at intervals during the evening ; had some- 
times retired from the light into obscure corners ; and, 
by more than one person, had been observed stealing 
into the private passages of the house. It was pre- 
sumed in general, that the man must be known to Wil- 
liamson. And, in some slight degree, as an occasional 
customer of the house, it is not impossible that he was. 
But afterwards, this repulsive stranger, with his ca- 
daverous ghastliness, extraordinary hair, and glazed 
eyes, showing himself intermittingly through the hours 
from 8 to 11 p. m., revolved upon the memory of all 
who had steadily observed him with something of the 
same freezing effect as belongs to the two assassins in 



38 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

' Macbeth,' who present themselves reeking from the 
murder of Banquo, and glcammg dimly, with dreadful 
faces, from the misty background, athwart the pomps 
of the regal banquet. 

Meantime the clock struck eleven; the company 
broke up ; the door of entrance was nearly closed ; and 
at this moment of general dispersion the situation of 
the five inmates left upon the premises was precisely 
this : the three elders, viz., Williamson, his wife, and 
his female servant, were all occupied on the ground 
floor — Williamson himself was drawing ale, porter, 
«fec., for those neighbors, in whose favor the house- 
door had been left ajar, until the hour of twelve should 
strike ; Mrs. Williamson and her servant were moving 
to and fro between the back-kitchen and a little parlor ; 
the little grand-daughter, whose sleeping-room was on 
the Jirst floor (which term in London means always the 
floor raised by one flight of stairs above the level of 
the street), had been fast asleep since nine o'clock ; 
lastly, the journeyman artisan had retired to rest for 
some time. He was a regular lodger in the house ; 
and his bedroom was on the second floor. For some 
time he had been undressed, and had lain down in bed. 
Being, as a working man, bound to habits of early 
rising, he was naturally anxious to fall asleep as soon 
as possible. But, on this particular night, his uneasi- 
ness, arising from the recent murders at No. 29, rose 
to a paroxysm of nervous excitement which kept him 
awake. It is possible, that from somebody he had 
heard of the suspicious-looking stranger, or might even 
personally observed him slinking about. But, were it 
otherwise, he was aware of several circumstances 
dangerously affecting this house ; for instance, the 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 39 

ruffianism of this whole neighborhood, and the dis- 
ao-reeable fact that the Marrs had Uved within a few 
doors of this very house, which again argued that the 
murderer also lived at no great distance. These were 
matters of general alarm. But there were others 
peculiar to this house ; in particular, the notoriety of 
Williamson's opulence ; the belief, whether well or ill 
founded, that he accumulated, in desks and drawers, 
the money continually flowing into his hands ; and 
lastly, the danger so ostentatiously courted by that 
habit of leaving the house-door ajar through one entire 
hour — and that hour loaded with extra danger, by the 
well-advertised assurance that no collision need be 
feared with chance convivial visiters, since all such 
people were banished at eleven. A regulation, which 
had hitherto operated beneficially for the character and 
comfort of the house, now, on the contrary, under 
altered circumstances, became a positive proclamation 
of exposure and defencelessness, through one entire 
period of an hour. Williamson himself, it was said 
generally, being a large unwieldy man, past seventy, 
and signally inactive, ought, in prudence, to make the 
locking of his door coincident with the dismissal of his 
evening party. 

Upon these and other grounds of alarm (particularly 
this, that Mrs. Williamson was reported to possess a 
considerable quantity of plate), the journeyman was 
musing painfully, and the time might be within twenty- 
eight or twenty-five minutes of twelve, when all at 
once, with a crash, proclaiming some hand of hideous 
violence, the house-door was suddenly Shut and locked. 
Here, then, beyond all doubt, was the diabolic man, 
clothed in mystery, from No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway. 



40 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

Yes, that dreadful being, who for twelve days had 
employed all thoughts and all tongues, was now, too 
certainly, in this defenceless house, and would, in a few 
minutes, be face to face with every one of its inmates. 
A question still lingered in the public mind — whether 
at Marr's there might not have been two men at work. 
If so, there would be two at present ; and one of the 
two would be immediately disposable for the up-stairs 
work ; since no danger could obviously be more imme- 
diately fatal to such an attack than any alarm given 
from an upper window to the passengers in the street. 
Through one half-minute the poor panic-stricken man 
sat up motionless in bed. But then he rose, his first 
movement being towards the door of his room. Not for 
any purpose of securing it against intrusion — too well 
he knew that there was no fastening of any sort — 
neither lock, nor bolt ; nor was there any such move- 
able furniture in the room as might have availed to 
barricade the door, even if time could be counted on 
for such an attempt. It was no effect of prudence, 
merely the fascination of killing fear it was, that drove 
him to open the door. One step brought him to the 
head of the stairs : he lowered his head over the balus- 
trade in order to listen ; and at that moment ascended, 
from the little parlor, this agonizing cry from the 
woman-servant, ' Lord Jesus Christ ! we shall all be 
murdered ! ' What a Medusa's head must have lurked 
in those dreadful bloodless features, and those glazed 
rigid eyes, that seemed rightfully belonging to a 
corpse, when one glance at them sufficed to proclaim 
a death-warrant. 

Three separate death-struggles were by this time 
over ; and the poor petrified journeyman, quite uncon- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 41 

scious of what he was doing, in blind, passive, self- 
surrender to panic, absolutely descended both flights of 
stairs. Infinite terror inspired him with the same im- 
pulse as might have been inspired by headlong courage. 
In his shirt, and upon old decaying stairs, that at times 
creaked under his feet, he continued to descend, until 
he had reached the lowest step but four. The situation 
was tremendous beyond any that is on record. A 
sneeze, a cough, almost a breathing, and the young 
man would be a corpse, without a chance or a struggle 
for his life. The murderer was at that time in the 
little parlor — the door of which parlor faced you in 
descending the stairs; and this door stood ajar; indeed, 
much more considerably open than what is understood 
by the term ' ajar.' Of that quadrant, or .90 degrees, 
which the door would describe in swinging so far open 
as to stand at right angles to the lobby, or to itself, in a 
closed position, 55 degrees at the least were exposed. 
Consequently, two out of three corpses were exposed to 
the young man's gaze. Where was the third t And the 
murderer — where was he? As to the murderer, he 
was walking rapidly backwards and forwards in the 
parlor, audible but not visible at first, being engaged 
with something or other in that part of the room which 
the door still concealed. What the something might 
be, the sound soon explained ; he was applying keys 
tentatively to a cupboard, a closet, and a scrutoire, in 
the hidden part of the room. Very soon, however, he 
came into view ; but, fortunately for the young man, at 
this critical moment, the murderer's purpose too entirely 
absorbed him to allow of his throwing a glance to the 
staircase, on which else the white figure of the jour- 
neyman, standing in motionless horror, would have 



4 



42 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

been detected in one instant, and seasoned for the grave 
in the second. As to the third corpse, the missing 
corpse, viz., Mr. Williamson's, that is in the cellar; 
and how its local position can be accounted for, re- 
mains a separate question much discussed at the time, 
but never satisfactorily cleared up. Meantime, that 
Williamson was dead, became evident to the young 
man ; since else he would have been heard stirring or 
groaning. Three friends, therefore, out of four, whom 
the young man had parted with forty minutes ago, were 
now extinguished ; remained, therefore, 40 per cent, (a 
large per centage for Williams to leave) ; remained, in 
fact, himself and his pretty young friend, the little > 
grand-daughter, whose childish innocence was still 
slumbering without fear for herself, or grief for her 
aged grand-parents. If they are gone for ever, happily 
one friend (for such he will prove himself, indeed, if 
from such a danger he can save this child) is pretty 
near to her. But alas ! he is still nearer to a murderer. 
At this moment he is unnerved for any exertion what- 
ever ; he has changed into a pillar of ice ; for the 
objects before him, separated by just thirteen feet, are 
these : — The housemaid had been caught by the mur- 
derer on her knees ; she was kneeling before the fire- 
grate, which she had been polishing with black lead. 
That part of her task was finished ; and she had passed 
on to another task, viz., the filling of the grate with 
wood and coals, not for kindling at this moment, but so 
as to have it ready for kindling on the next day. The 
appearances all showed that she must have been en- 
gaged in this labor at the very moment when the 
murderer entered ; and perhaps the succession of the 
incidents arranged itself as follows: — From the awful 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 43 

ejaculation and loud outcry to Christ, as overheard by 
the journeyman, it was clear that then first she had 
been alarmed ; yet this was at least one and a-half or 
even two minutes after the door-slamming. Conse- 
quently the alarm which had so fearfully and season- 
ably alarmed the young man, must, in some unaccount- 
able way, have been misinterpreted by the two women. 
It was said, at the time, that Mrs. Williamson labored 
under some dulness of hearing ; and it was conjec- 
tured that the servant, having her ears filled with the 
noise of her own scrubbing, and her head half under 
the grate, might have confounded it with the street 
noises, or else might have imputed this violent closure 
to some mischievous boys. But, howsoever explained, 
the fact was evident, that, until the words of appeal to 
Christ, the servant had noticed nothing suspicious, 
nothing which interrupted her labors. If so, it followed 
that neither had Mrs. Williamson noticed anything ; for, 
in that case, she would have communicated her own 
alarm to the servant, since both were in the same small 
room. Apparently the course of things after the mur- 
derer had entered the room was this : — Mrs. Williamson 
had probably not seen him, from the accident of stand- 
ing with her back to the door. Her, therefore, before 
he was himself observed at all, he had stunned and 
prostrated by a shattering blow on the back of her 
head ; this blow, inflicted by a crow-bar, had smashed 
in the hinder part of the skull. She fell ; and by the 
noise of her fall (for all was the work of a moment) 
had first roused the attention of the servant ; who then 
uttered the cry which had reached the young man ; but 
before she could repeat it, the murderer had descended 
with his uplifted instrument upon her head, crushing 



44 THREE MEMORABLE BIURDERS. 

the skull inwards upon the brain. Both the women 
were irrecoverably destroyed, so that further outrages 
were needless ; and, moreover, the murderer was con- 
scious of the imminent danger from delay ; and yet, in 
spite of his hurry, so fully did he appreciate the fatal 
consequences to himself, if any of his victims should so 
far revive into consciousness as to make circumstantial 
depositions, that, by way of making this impossible, he 
had proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. All 
this tallied with the appearances as now presenting 
themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwards 
with her head to the door ; the servant, from her kneel- 
ing posture, had been incapable of rising, and had 
presented her head passively to blows ; after which, the 
miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as to 
expose her throat, and the murder was finished. 

It is remarkable that the young artisan, paralyzed 
as he had been by fear, and evidently fascinated for a 
time so as to walk right towards the lion's mouth, yet 
found himself able to notice everything important. 
The reader must suppose him at this point watching 
the murderer whilst hanging over the body of Mrs. 
Williamson, and whilst renewing his search for certain 
important keys. Doubtless it was an anxious situation 
for the murderer; for, unless he speedily found the 
keys wanted, all this hideous tragedy would end in 
nothing but a prodigious increase of the public horror, 
in tenfold precautions therefore, and redoubled obsta- 
cles interposed between himself and his future game. 
Nay, there was even a nearer interest at stake ; his 
own immediate safety might, by a probable accident, 
be compromised. Most of those who came to the 
house for liquor were giddy girls or children, who, on 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 45 

finding this house closed, would go off carelessly to 
some other; but, let any thoughtful woman or man 
come to the door now, a full quarter of an hour before 
the established time of closing, in that case suspicion 
would arise too powerful to be checked. There would 
be a sudden alarm given ; after which, mere luck 
would decide the event. For it is a remarkable fact, 
and one that illustrates the singular inconsistency of 
this villain, who, being often so superfluously subtle, 
was in other directions so reckless and improvident, 
that at this very moment, standing amongst corpses 
that had deluged the little parlor with blood, Williams 
must have been in considerable doubt whether he had 
any sure means of egress. There were windows, he 
knew, to the back ; but upon what ground they opened, 
he seems to have had no certain information ; and in a 
neighborhood so dangerous, the windows of the lower 
story would not improbably be nailed down ; those in 
the upper might be free, but then came the necessity 
of a leap too formidable. From all this, however, the 
sole practical inference was to hurry forward with the 
trial of further keys, and to detect the hidden treasure. 
This it was, this intense absorption in one overmaster- 
ing pursuit, that dulled the murderer's perceptions as 
to all around him ; otherwise, he must have heard the 
breathing of the young man, which to himself at times 
became fearfully audible. As the murderer stood once 
more over the body of Mrs. Williamson, and searched 
her pockets more narrowly, he pulled out various 
clusters of keys, one of which dropping, gave a harsh 
gingling sound upon the floor. At this time it was that 
the secret witness, from his secret stand, noticed the 
fact of Williams's surtout being lined with silk of the 



46 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

finest quality. One other fact he noticed, which even- 
tually became more immediately important than many 
stronger circumstances of incrimination ; this was, that 
the shoes of the murderer, apparently new, and bought, 
probably, with poor Marr's money, creaked as he 
walked, harshly and frequently. With the new clusters 
of keys, the murderer walked off to the hidden section 
of the parlor. And here, at last, was suggested to the 
journeyman the sudden opening for an escape. Some 
minutes would be lost to a certainty trying all these 
keys ; and subsequently in searching the drawers, sup- 
posing that the keys answered — or in violently forcing 
them, supposing that they did not. He might thus 
count upon a brief interval of leisure, whilst the rat- 
tling of the keys might obscure to the murderer the 
creaking of the stairs under the re-ascending journey- 
man. His plan was now formed : on regaining his 
bedroom, he placed the bed against the door by way 
of a transient retardation to the enemy, that might give 
him a short warning, and in the worst extremity, might 
give him a chance for life by means of a desperate 
leap. This change made as quietly as possible, he 
tore the sheets, pillow-cases, and blankets into broad 
ribbons ; and after plaiting them into ropes, spliced 
the different lengths together. But at the very first he 
descries this ugly addition to his labors. Where shall 
he look for any staple, hook, bar, or other fixture, 
from which his rope, when twisted, may safely depend } 
Measured from the window-siZ/ — i. e., the lowest part 
of the window architrave — there count but twenty-two 
or twenty-three feet to the ground. Of this length 
ten or twelve feet may be looked upon as cancelled, 
because to that extent he might drop without danger. 



THREE BIEMORABLE MURDERS. 47 

So much being deducted, there would remain, say, a 
dozen feet of rope to prepare. But, unhappily, there 
is no stout iron fixture anywhere about his window. 
The nearest, indeed the sole fixture of that sort, is not 
near to the window at all ; it is a spike fixed (for no 
reason at all that is apparent) in the bed-tester ; now, 
the bed being shifted, the spike is shifted ; and its 
distance from the window, having been always four 
feet, is now seven. Seven entire feet, therefore, must 
be added to that which would have sufficed if measured 
from the window. But courage ! God, by the proverb 
of all nations in Christendom, helps those that help 
themselves. This our young man thankfully acknowl- 
edges ; he reads already, in the very fact of any 
spike at all being found where hitherto it has been 
useless, an earnest of providential aid. Were it only 
for himself that he worked, he could not feel himself 
meritoriously employed ; but this is not so ; in deep 
sincerity, he is now agitated for the poor child, whom 
he knows and loves ; every minute, he feels, brings 
ruin nearer to her; and, as he passed her door, his 
first thought had been to take her out of bed in his 
arms, and to carry her where she might share his 
chances. But, on consideration, he felt that this sud- 
den awaking of her, and the impossibility of even 
whispering any explanation, would cause her to cry 
audibly ; and the inevitable indiscretion of one would 
be fatal to the two. As the Alpine avalanches, when 
suspended above the traveller's head, oftentimes (we 
are told) come down through the stirring of the air by 
a simple whisper, precisely on such a tenure of a 
whisper was now suspended the murderous malice of 
the man below. No ; there is but one way to save 



48 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

the child; towards her deliverance, the first step is 
through his own. And he has made an excellent 
beginning ; for the spike, which too fearfully he had 
expected to see torn away by any strain upon the 
half-carious wood, stands firmly when tried against the 
pressure of his own weight. He has rapidly fastened 
on to it three lengths of his new rope, measuring 
eleven ^qqI. He plaits it roughly ; so that only three 
feet have been lost in the intertwisting ; he has spliced 
on a second length equal to the first ; so that, already, 
sixteen feet are ready to throw out of the window ; 
and thus, let the worst come to the worst, it will not be 
absolute ruin to swarm down the rope so far as it will 
reach, and then to drop boldly. All this has been 
accomplished in about six minutes ; and the hot con- 
test between above and below is steadily but fervently 
proceeding. Murderer is working hard in the parlor ; 
journeyman is working hard in the bedroom. Mis- 
creant is getting on famously down-stairs ; one batch 
of bank-notes he has already bagged ; and is hard 
upon the scent of a second. Fie has also sprung a 
covey of golden coins. Sovereigns as yet were not ; 
but guineas at this period fetched thirty shillings 
a-piece ; and he has worked his way into a little quarry 
of these. Murderer is almost joyous ; and if any 
creature is still living in this house, as shrewdly he 
suspects, and very soon means to know, with that 
creature he would be happy, before cutting the crea- 
ture's throat, to drink a glass of something. Instead 
of the glass, might he not make a present to the poor 
creature of its throat ? Oh no ! impossible ! Throats 
are a sort of thing that he never makes presents of; 
business — business must be attended to. Really the 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 49 

two men, considered simply as men of business, are 
both meritorious. Like chorus and semi-chorus, strophe 
and antistrophe, they work each against the other. 
Pull journeyman, pull murderer ! Pull baker, pull 
devil ! As regards the journeyman, he is now safe. 
To his sixteen feet, of which seven are neutralized by 
the distance of the bed, he has at last added six feet 
more, which will be short of reaching the ground by 
perhaps ten feet — a trifle which man or boy may drop 
without injury. All is safe, therefore, for him : which 
is more than one can be sure of for miscreant in the 
parlor. Miscreant, however, takes it coolly enough : 
the reason being, that, with all his cleverness, for once 
in his life miscreant has been over-reached. The 
reader and 1 know, but miscreant does not in the least 
suspect, a little fact of some importance, viz., that 
just now through a space of full three minutes he has 
been overlooked and studied by one, who (though 
reading in a dreadful book, and suffering under mortal 
panic) took accurate notes of so much as his limited 
opportunities allowed him to see, and will assuredly 
report the creaking shoes and the silk-mounted surtout 
in quarters where such little facts will tell very little to 
his advantage. But, although it is true that Mr. Wil- 
liams, unaware of the journeyman's having ' assisted ' 
at the examination of Mrs. Williamson's pockets, could 
not connect any anxiety with that person's subsequent 
proceedings, nor specially, therefore, with his havmg 
embarked in the rope-weaving line, assuredly he knew 
of reasons enough for not loitering. And yet he did 
loiter. Reading his acts by the light of such mute 
traces as he left behind him, the police became aware 
that latterly he must have loitered. And the reason 
6 



50 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

which governed him is striking ; because at once it 
records — that murder was not pursued by him simply 
as a means to an end, but also as an end for itself. 
Mr. Williams had now been upon the premises for 
perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes ; and in that space 
of time he had dispatched, in a style satisfactory to 
himself, a considerable amount of business. He had 
done, in commercial language, ' a good stroke of busi- 
ness.' Upon two floors, viz., the cellar- floor and the 
ground-floor, he has ' accounted for ' all the population. 
But there remained at least two floors more ; and it 
now occurred to Mr. Williams that, although the land- 
lord's somewhat chilling manner had shut him out from 
any familiar knowledge of the household arrange- 
ments, too probably on one or other of those floors 
there must be some throats. As to plunder, he has 
already bagged the whole. And it was next to impos- 
sible that any arrear the most trivial should still remain 
for a gleaner. But the throats — the throats — there 
it was that arrears and gleanings might perhaps be 
counted on. And thus it appeared that, in his wolfish 
thirst for blood, Mr. Williams put to hazard the whole 
fruits of his night's work, and his life into the bargain. 
At this moment, if the murderer knew all, could he 
see the open window above stairs ready for the descent 
of the journeyman, could he witness the life-and-death 
rapidity with which that journeyman is working, could 
he guess at the almighty uproar which within ninety 
seconds will be maddening the population of this pop- 
ulous district — no picture of a maniac in flight of 
panic or in pursuit of vengeance would adequately 
represent the agony of haste with which he would 
himself be hurrying to the street-door for final evasion. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 51 

That mode of escape was still free. Even at this 
moment, there yet remained time sufficient for a suc- 
cessful flight, and, therefore, for the follov/ing revolu- 
tion in the romance of his own abominable life. He 
had in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty ; 
means, therefore, for a full disguise. This very night, 
if he will shave off his yellow hair, and blacken his 
eyebrows, buying, when morning light returns, a dark- 
colored wig, and clothes such as may co-operate in 
personating the character of a grave professional man, 
he may elude all suspicions of impertinent policemen ; 
may sail by any one of a hundred vessels bound for 
any port along the huge line of sea-board (stretching 
through twenty-four hundred miles) of the American 
United States ; may enjoy fifty years for leisurely 
repentance ; and may even die in the odor of sanctity. 
On the other hand, if he prefer active life, it is not 
impossible that, with his subtlety, hardihood, and 
unscrupulousness, in a land where the simple process 
of naturalization converts the alien at once into a child 
of the family, he might rise to the president's chair ; 
might have a statue at his death ; and afterwards a life 
in three volumes quarto, with no hint glancing towards 
No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway. But all depends on the 
next ninety seconds. Within that time there is a sharp 
turn to be taken ; there is a wrong turn, and a right 
turn. Should his better angel guide him to the right 
one, all may yet go well as regards this world's pros- 
perity. But behold ! in two minutes from this point 
we shall see him take the wrong one : and then Neme- 
sis will be at his heels with ruin perfect and sudden. 

Meantime, if the murderer allows himself to loiter, 
the ropemaker overhead does not. Well he knows 



52 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

that tne poor chilcPs fate is on the edge of a razor : for 
all turns upon the alarm being raised before the mur- 
derer reaches her bedside. And at this very moment, 
whilst desperate agitation is nearly paralyzing his 
fingers, he hears the sullen stealthy step of the mur- 
derer creeping up through the darkness. It had been 
the expectation of the journeyman (founded on the 
clamorous uproar with which the street-door was slam- 
med) that Williams, when disposable for his up-stairs 
work, would come racing at a long jubilant gallop, and 
with a tiger roar ; and perhaps, on his natural instincts, 
he would have done so. But this mode of approach, 
which was of dreadful effect when applied to a case 
of surprise, became dangerous in the case of people 
who might by this time have been placed fully upon 
their guard. The step which he had heard was on the 
staircase — but upon which stair? He fancied upon 
the lowest : and in a movement so slow and cautious, 
even this might make all the difference ; yet might it 
not have been the tenth, twelfth, or fourteenth stair .? 
Never, perhaps, in this world did any man feel his own 
responsibility so cruelly loaded and strained, as at this 
moment did the poor journeyman on behalf of the 
slumbering child. Lose but two seconds, through 
awkwardness or through the self-counteractions of 
panic, and for her the total difference arose between 
life and death. Still there is a hope : and nothing can 
so frightfully expound the hellish nature of him whose 
baleful shadow, to speak astrologically, at this moment 
darkens the house of life, than the simple expression 
of the ground on which this hope rested. The journey- 
man felt sure that the murderer would not be satisfied 
to kill the poor child whilst unconscious. This would 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 53 

be to defeat his whole purpose in murdering ner at all. 
To an epicure in murder such as Williams, it would be 
taking away the very sting of the enjoyment, if the 
poor child should be suffered to drink off the bitter cup 
of death without fully apprehending the misery of the 
situation. But this luckily would require time : the 
double confusion of mind, first, from being roused up 
at so unusual an hour, and, secondly, from the horror 
of the occasion when explained to her, would at first 
produce fainting, or some mode of insensibility or dis- 
traction, such as must occupy a considerable time. 
The logic of the case, in short, all rested upon the ultra 
fiendishness of Williams. Were he likely to be con- 
tent with the mere fact of the child's death, apart from 
the process and leisurely expansion of its mental 
agony — in that case there would be no hope. But, 
because our present murderer is fastidiously finical in 
his exactions — a sort of martinet in the scenical group- 
ing and draping of the circumstances in his murders — 
therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable, since all 
such refinements of preparation demand time. Mur- 
ders of mere necessity Williams was obliged to hurry ; 
but, in a murder of pure voluptuousness, entirely dis- 
interested, where no hostile witness was to be removed, 
no extra booty to be gained, and no revenge to be grat- 
ified, it is clear that to hurry would be altogether to 
ruin. If this child, therefore, is to be saved, it will be 
on pure cDsthetical considerations.* 

* Let the reader, who is disposed to regard as exaggerated or 
romantic the pure fiendishness imputed to "Williams, recollect that, 
except for the luxurious purpose of basking and revelling in the 
anguish of dying despair, he had no motive at all, small or great, 
for attempting the murder of this young girl. She had seen 



54 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

But all considerations whatever are at this moment 
suddenly cut short. A second step is heard on the 
stairs, but still stealthy and cautious ; a third — and 
then the child's doom seems fixed. But just at that 
moment all is ready. The window is wide open ; the 
rope is swinging free ; the journeyman has launched 
himself; and already he is in the first stage of his de- 
scent. Simply by the weight of his person he descended, 
and by the resistance of his hands he retarded the de- 
scent. The danger was, that the rope should run too 
smoothly through his hands, and that by too rapid an 
acceleration of pace he should come violently to the 
ground. Happily he was able to resist the descending 
impetus : the knots of the splicings furnished a succes- 
sion of retardations. But the rope proved shorter by 
four or five feet than he had calculated : ten or eleven 
feet from the ground he hung suspended in the air; 
speechless for the present, through long-continued 
agitation ; and not daring to drop boldly on the rough 
carriage pavement, lest he should fracture his legs. 
But the night was not dark, as it had been on occasion 
of the Marr murders. And yet, for purposes of criminal 
police, it was by accident worse than the darkest night 
that ever hid a murder or baffled a pursuit. London, 
from east to west, was covered with a deep pall (rising 
from the river) of universal fog. Hence it happened, 
that for twenty or thirty seconds the young man hang- 
ing in the air was not observed. His white shirt at 

nothing, heard nothing — was .fast asleep, and her door was 
closed ; so that, as a witness against him, he knew that she was 
as useless as any one of the three corpses. And yet he was 
making preparations for her murder, when the alarm in the 
street interi-upted him. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 55 

length attracted notice. Three or four people ran up, 
and received him in their arms, all anticipating some 
dreadful annunciation. To what house did he belong .'' 
Even that was not instantly apparent ; but he pointed 
with his finger to Williamson's door, and said in a 
half-choking whisper — ' ilf arr's murderer^ now at 
loork I ' 

All explained itself in a moment : the silent language 
of the fact made its own eloquent revelation. The 
mysterious exterminator of No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway 
had visited another house ; and, behold ! one man only 
had escaped through the air, and in his night-dress, to 
tell the tale. Superstitiously, there was something to 
check the pursuit of this unintelligible criminal. Mor- 
ally, and in the interests of vindictive justice, there 
was everything to rouse, quicken, and sustain it. 

Yes, Marr's murderer — the man of mystery — was 
again at work ; at this moment perhaps extinguishing 
some lamp of life, and not at any remote place, but 
here — in the very house which the listeners to this 
dreadful announcement were actually touching. The 
chaos and blind uproar of the scene which followed, 
measured by the crowded reports in the journals of 
many subsequent days, and in one feature of that case, 
has never to my knowledge had its parallel ; or, if a 
parallel, only in one case — what followed, I mean, on 
the acquittal of the seven bishops at Westminster in 
1688. At present there was more than passionate 
enthusiasm. The frenzied movement of mixed horror 
and exultation — the ululation of vengeance which 
ascended instantaneously from the individual street, and 
then by a sublime sort of magnetic contagion from all 



56 THREE MEMORABLE BIURDERS. 

the adjacent streets, can be adequately expressed only 
by a rapturous passage in Shelley : — 

' The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness 

Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying 
Upon the wings of fear : — From his dull madness 

The starveling waked, and died in joy : the dying. 
Among the corpses in stark agony lying, 

Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope 
Closed their faint eyes : from house to house replying 

With loud acclaim the living shook heaven's cope, 
And fill'd the startled earth with echoes.'* 

There was something, indeed, half inexplicable in the 
instantaneous interpretation of the gathering shout ac- 
cording to its true meaning. In fact, the deadly roar 
of vengeance, and its sublime unity, could point in this 
district only to the one demon whose idea had brooded 
and tyrannized, for twelve days, over the general 
heart : every door, every window in the neighborhood, 
flew open as if at a word of command ; multitudes, 
without waiting for the regular means of egress, leaped 
down at once from the windows on the lower story ; 
sick men rose from their beds ; in one instance, as if 
expressly to verify the image of Shelley (in v. 4, 5, 6, 7), 
a man whose death had been looked for through some 
days, and who actually did die on the following day, 
rose, armed himself with a sword, and descended in 
his shirt into the street. The chance was a good one, 
and the mob were made aware of it, for catching the 
wolfish dog in the high noon and carnival of his bloody 
revels — in the very centre of his own shambles. For 

* * ReYolt of Islam,' canto xii. 



THREE MEMORABLE BIUEDERS. 57 

a moment the mob was self-baffled by its own numbers 
and its own fury. But even that fury felt the call for 
self-control. It was evident that the massy street-door 
must be driven in, since there was no longer any living 
person to co-operate with their efforts from within, ex- 
cepting only a female child. Crowbars dexterously 
applied in one minute threw the door out of hangings, 
and the people entered like a torrent. It may be 
guessed with what fret and irritation to their consuming 
fury, a signal of pause and absolute silence was made 
by a person of local importance. In the hope of re- 
ceiving some useful communication, the mob became 
silent. ' Now listen,' said the man of authority, ' and 
we shall learn whether he is above-stairs or below.' 
Immediately a noise was heard as if of some one 
forcing windows, and clearly the sound came from a 
bedroom above. Yes, the fact was apparent that the 
murderer was even yet in the house : he had been 
caught in a trap. Not having made himself familiar 
with the details of Williamson's house, to all appear- 
ance he had suddenly become a prisoner in one of the 
upper rooms. Towards this the crowd now rushed 
impetuously. The door, however, was found to be 
slightly fastened ; and, at the moment when this was 
forced, a loud crash of the window, both glass and 
frame, announced that the wretch had made his escape. 
He had leaped down ; and several persons in the 
crowd, who burned with the general fury, leaped after 
hun. These persons had not troubled themselves about 
the nature of the ground ; but now, on making an ex- 
amination of it with torches, they reported it to be an 
inclined plane, or embankment of clay, very wet and 
adhesive. The prints of the man's footsteps were 



58 THREE MEMORABLE BIURDERS. 

deeply impressed upon the clay, and therefore easily 
traced up to the summit of the embankment ; but it was 
perceived at once that pursuit would be useless, from 
the density of the mist. Two feet ahead of you, a man 
was entirely withdrawn from your power of identifica- 
tion ; and, on overtaking him, you could not venture 
to challenge him as the same whom you had lost sight 
of. Never, through the course of a whole century, 
could there be a night expected more propitious to an 
escaping criminal : means of disguise Williams now 
had in excess ; and the dens were innumerable in the 
neighborhood of the river that could have sheltered him 
for years from troublesome inquiries. But favors are 
thrown away upon the reckless and the thankless. 
That night, when the turning-point offered itself for his 
whole future career, Williams took the wrong turn ; 
for, out of mere indolence, he took the turn to his old 
lodgings — that place which, in all England, he had 
just now the most reason to shun. 

Meantime the crowd had thoroughly searched the 
premises of Williamson. The first inquiry was for the 
young grand-daughter. Williams, it was evident, had 
gone into her room : but in this room apparently it was 
that the sudden uproar in the streets had surprised him ; 
after which his undivided attention had been directed 
to the windows, since through these only any retreat 
had been left open to him. Even this retreat he owed 
only to the fog and to the hurry of the moment, and to 
the difficulty of approaching the premises by the rear. 
The little girl was naturall}^ agitated by the influx of 
strangers at that hour ; but otherwise, through the hu- 
mane precautions of the neighbors, she was preserved 
from all knowledge of the dreadful events that had oc- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 59 

curred whilst she herself was sleeping. Her poor old 
grandfather was still missing, until the crowd descended 
into the cellar ; he was then found lying prostrate on 
the cellar floor : apparently he had been thrown down 
from the top of the cellar stairs, and with so much vio- 
lence, that one leg was broken. After he had been 
thus disabled, Williams had gone down to him, and cut 
his throat. There was much discussion at the time, in 
some of the public journals, upon the possibility of re- 
conciling these incidents with other circumstantialities 
of the case, supposing that only one man had been con- 
cerned in the affair. That there teas only one man 
concerned, seems to be certain. One only was seen 
or heard at Marr's : one only, and beyond all doubt the 
same man, was seen by the young journeyman in Mrs. 
Williamson's parlor ; and one only was traced by his 
footmarks on the clay embankment. Apparently the 
course which he had pursued was this : he had intro- 
duced himself to Williamson by ordering some beer. 
This order would oblige the old man to go down into 
the cellar ; Williams would wait until he had reached 
it, and would then ' slam ' and lock the street-door in 
the violent way described. Williamson would come up 
in agitation upon hearing this violence. The murderer, 
aware that he would do so, met him, no doubt, at the 
head of the cellar stairs, and threw him down ; after 
which he would go down to consummate the murder in 
his ordinary way. All this would occupy a minute, or 
a minute and a half; and in that way the interval would 
be accounted for that elapsed between the alarming 
sound of the street-door as heard by the journeyman, 
and the lamentable outcry of the female servant. It is 
evident also, that the reason why no cry whatsoever 



60 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

had been heard from the lips of Mrs. Williamson, is 
due to the positions of the parties as I have sketched 
them. Coming behind Mrs. Williamson, unseen there- 
fore, and from her deafness unheard, the murderer 
would inflict entire abolition of consciousness while she 
was yet unaware of his presence. But with the servant, 
who had unavoidably witnessed the attack upon her 
mistress, the murderer could not obtain the same ful- 
ness of advantage ; and she therefore had time for 
making an agonizing ejaculation. 

It has been mentioned, that the murderer of the Marrs 
was not for nearly a fortnight so much as suspected ; 
meaning that, previously to the Williamson murder, no 
vestige of any ground for suspicion in any direction 
whatever had occurred either to the general public or to 
the police. But there were two very limited exceptions 
to this state of absolute ignorance. Some of the magis- 
trates had in their possession something which, when 
closely examined, offered a very probable means for 
tracing the criminal. But as yet they had not traced 
him. Until the Friday morning next after the destruc- 
tion of the Williamsons, they had not published the im- 
portant fact, that upon the ship-carpenter's mallet (with 
which, as regarded the stunning or disabling process, 
the murders had been achieved) were inscribed the let- 
ters ' J. P.' This mallet had, by a strange oversight 
on the part of the murderer, been left behind in Marr's 
shop ; and it is an interesting fact, therefore, that, had 
the villain been intercepted by the brave pawnbroker, 
he would have been met virtually disarmed. This pub- 
lic notification was made officially on the Friday, viz., 
on the thirteenth day after the first murder. And it 
was instantly followed (as will be seen) by a most im- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 61 

portant result. Meantime, within the secrecy of one 
single bedroom in all London, it is a fact that Williams 
had been whisperingly the object of very deep suspicion 
from the very first — that is, within that same hour 
which witnessed the Marr tragedy. And singular it is, 
that the suspicion was due entirely to his own folly. 
Williams lodged, in company with other men of various 
nations, at a public-house. In a large dormitory there 
were arranged five or six beds ; these were occupied 
by artisans, generally of respectable character. One 
or two Englishmen there were, one or two Scotchmen, 
three or four Germans, and Williams, whose birth-place 
was not certainly known. On the fatal Saturday night, 
about half-past one o'clock, when Williams returned 
from his dreadful labors, he found the English and 
Scotch party asleep, but the Germans awake : one of 
them was sitting up with a lighted candle in his hands, 
and reading aloud to the other two. Upon this, Wil- 
liams said, in an angry and very peremptory tone, ' Oh, 
put that candle out ; put it out directly ; we shall all be 
burned in our beds.' Had the British party in the room 
been awake, Mr. Williams would have roused a muti- 
nous protest against this arrogant mandate. But Ger- 
mans are generally mild and facile in their tempers ; 
so the light was complaisantly extinguished. Yet, as 
there were no curtains, it struck the Germans that the 
danger was really none at all ; for bed-clothes, massed 
upon each other, will no more burn than the leaves of 
a closed book. Privately, therefore, the Germans drew 
an inference, that Mr. Williams must have had some 
urgent motive for withdrawing his own person and dress 
from observation. What this motive might be, the next 
day's news diffused all over London, and of course at 



62 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

this house, not two furlongs from Marr's shop, made 
awfully evident ; and, as may w^ell be supposed, the 
suspicion was communicated to the other members of 
the dormitory. All of them, however, were aware of 
the legal danger attaching, under English law, to insin- 
uations against a man, even if true, which might not 
admit of proof. In reality, had Williams used the most 
obvious precautions, had he simply walked down to the 
Thames (not a stone's-throw distant), and flung two of 
his implements into the river, no conclusive proof could 
have been adduced against him. And he might have 
realized the scheme of Courvoisier (the murderer of 
Lord William Russell) — viz., have sought each sepa- 
rate month's support in a separate well-concei;ted mur- 
der. The party in the dormitory, meantime, were 
satisfied themselves, but waited for evidences that 
might satisfy others. No sooner, therefore, had the 
official notice been published as to the initials J. P. on 
the mallet, than every man in the house recognized at 
once the well-known initials of an honest Norwegian 
ship-carpenter, John Petersen, who had worked in the 
English dockyards until the present year ; but, having 
occasion to revisit his native land, had left his box of 
tools in the garrets of this inn. These garrets were 
now searched. Petersen's tool-chest was found, but 
wanting the mallet ; and, on further examination, 
another overwhelming discovery was made. The sur- 
geon, who examined the corpses at Williamson's, had 
given it as his opinion that the throats were not cut by 
means of a razor, but of some implement differently 
shaped. It was now remembered that Williams had 
recently borrowed a large French knife of peculiar 
construction ; and accordingly, from a heap of old lum- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS, 63 

ber and rags, there was soon extricated a waistcoat, 
which the whole house could swear to as recently worn 
by Williams. In this waistcoat, and glued by gore to 
the lining of its pockets, was found the French knife. 
Next, it was matter of notoriety to everybody in the 
inn, that Williams ordinarily wore at present a pair of 
creaking shoes, and a brown surtout lined with silk. 
Many other presumptions seemed scarcely called for. 
Williams was immediately apprehended, and briefly 
examined. This was on the Friday. On the Saturday 
morning (viz., fourteen days from the Marr murders) 
he was again brought up. The circumstantial evidence 
was overwhelming ; Williams watched its course, but 
said very little. At the close, he was fully committed 
for trial at the next sessions ; and it is needless to say, 
that, on his road to prison, he was pursued by mobs so 
fierce, that, under ordinary circumstances, there would 
have been small hope of escaping summary vengeance. 
But upon this occasion a powerful escort had been pro- 
vided ; so that he was safely lodged in jail. In this 
particular jail at this time, the regulation was, that at 
five o'clock, p. M. all the prisoners on the criminal side 
should be finally locked up for the night, and with- 
out candles. For fourteen hours (that is, until seven 
o'clock on the next morning) they were left unvisited, 
and in total darkness. Time, therefore, Williams had 
for committing suicide. The means in other respects 
were small. One iron bar there was, meant (if I re- 
member) for the suspension of a lamp ; upon this he 
had hanged himself by his braces. At what hour was 
uncertain : some people fancied at midnight. And in 
that case, precisely at the hour when, fourteen days 
before, he had been spreading horror and desolation 



64 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

through the quiet family of poor Marr, now was he 
forced into drinking of the same cup, presented to his 
lips by the same accursed hands. 

The case of the M'Keans, which has been specially 
alluded to, merits also a slight rehearsal for the dread- 
ful picturesqueness of some two or three amongst its 
circumstances. The scene of this murder was at a 
rustic inn, some few miles (I think) from Manchester ; 
and the advantageous situation of this inn it was, out 
of which arose the two fold temptations of the case. 
Generally speaking, an inn argues, of course, a close 
cincture of neighbors — as the original motive for 
opening such an establishment. But, in this case, the 
house individually was solitary, so that no interruption 
was to be looked for from any persons living within 
reach of screams ; and yet, on the other hand, the cir- 
cumjacent vicinity was eminently populous ; as one 
consequence of which, a benefit club had established 
its weekly rendezvous in this inn, and left the peculiar 
accumulations in their club-room, under the custody of 
the landlord. This fund arose often to a considerable 
amount, fifty or seventy pounds, before it was trans- 
ferred to the hands of a banker. Here, therefore, was 
a treasure worth some little risk, and a situation that 
promised next to none. These attractive circumstances 
had, by accident, become accurately known to one or 
both of the two M'Keans ; and, unfortunately, at a 
moment of overwhelming misfortune to themselves. 
They were hawkers ; and, until lately, had borne most 
respectable characters : but some mercantile crash had 
overtaken them with utter ruin, in which their joint 
capital had been swallowed up to the last shilling. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 65 

This sudden prostration had made them desperate : 
their own little property had been swallowed up in a 
large social catastrophe, and society at large they 
looked upon as accountable to them for a robbery. 
In preying, therefore, upon society, they considered 
themselves as pursuing a wild natural justice of retali- 
ation. The money aimed at did certainly assume the 
character of public money, being the product of many 
separate subscriptions. They forgot, however, that in 
the murderous acts, which too certainly they meditated 
as preliminaries to the robbery, they could plead no such 
imaginary social precedent. In dealing with a family 
that seemed almost helpless, if all went smoothly, they 
relied entirely upon their own bodily strength. They 
were stout young men, twenty-eight to thirty-two years 
old ; somewhat undersized as to height ; but squarely 
built, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, and so beau- 
tifully formed, as regarded the symmetry of their limbs 
and their articulations, that, after their execution, the 
bodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of the 
Manchester Infirmary, as objects of statuesque interest. 
On the other hand, the household which they proposed 
to attack consisted of the following four persons : — 1. 
the landlord, a stoutish farmer — but him they intended 
to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst 
robbers, and termed hocussing, i. e., clandestinely drug- 
ging the liquor of the victim with laudanum ; 2. the 
landlord's wife ; 3. a young servant woman ; 4. a boy, 
twelve or fourteen years old. The danger was, that 
out of four persons, scattered by possibility over a 
house which had two separate exits, one at least might 
escape, and by better acquaintance with the adjacent 
paths, might succeed in giving an alarm to some of the 
6 



66 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

houses a furlong distant. Their final resolution was, to he 
guided by circumstances as to the mode of conducting 
the affair ; and yet, as it seemed essential to success 
that they should assume the air of strangers to each 
other, it was necessary that they should preconcert 
some general outline of their plan ; since it would on 
this scheme be impossible, without awaking violent sus- 
picions, to make any communications under the eyes 
of the family. This outline included, at the least, one 
murder : so much was settled ; but, otherwise, their 
subsequent proceedings make it evident that they wished 
to have as little bloodshed as was consistent with their 
final object. On the appointed day, they presented 
themselves separately at the rustic inn, and at difierent 
hours. One came as early as four o'clock in the after- 
noon ; the other not until half-past seven. They saluted 
each other distantly and shyly ; and, though occasion- 
ally exchanging a few words in the character of 
strangers, did not seem disposed to any familiar inter- 
course. With the landlord, however, on his return 
about eight o'clock from Manchester, one of the brothers 
entered into a lively conversation ; invited him to take 
a tumbler of punch ; and, at a moment when the land- 
lord's absence from the room allowed it, poured into 
the punch a spoonful of laudanum. Some time after 
this, the clock struck ten ; upon which the elder M'Kean, 
professing to be weary, asked to be shown up to his 
bedroom ; for each brother, immediately on arriving, 
had engaged a bed. On this, the poor servant girl had 
presented herself with a bed-candle to light him up- 
stairs. At this critical moment the family were dis- 
tributed thus : — the landlord, stupefied with the horrid 
narcotic which he had drunk, had retired to a private 



THREE MEBIORABLE MURDERS. 67 

room adjoining the public room, for the purpose of re- 
clining upon a sofa : and he, luckily for his own safety, 
was looked upon as entirely incapacitated for action. 
The landlady was occupied with her husband. And 
thus the younger M'Kean was left alone in the public 
room. He rose, therefore, softly, and placed himself 
at the foot of the stairs which his brother had just 
ascended, so as to be sure of intercepting any fugitive 
from the bed-room above. Into that room the elder 
M'Kean was ushered by the servant, who pointed to two 
^eds — one of which was already half occupied by the 
boy, and the other empty : in these, she intimated that 
the two strangers must dispose of themselves for the 
night, according to any arrangement that they might 
agree upon. Saying this, she presented him with the 
candle, which he in a moment placed upon the table ; 
and, intercepting her retreat from the room threw his 
arm round her neck with a gesture as though he meant 
to kiss her. This was evidently what she herself an- 
ticipated, and endeavored to prevent. Her horror may 
be imagined, when she felt the perfidious hand that 
clasped her neck armed with a razor, and violently cut- 
ting her throat. She was hardly able to utter one 
scream, before she sank powerless upon the floor. This 
dreadful spectacle was witnessed by the boy, who was 
not asleep, but had presence of mind enough instantly 
to close his eyes. The murderer advanced hastily to 
the bed, and anxiously examined the expression of the 
boy's features : satisfied he was not, and he then placed 
his hand upon the boy's heart, in order to judge by its 
beatings whether he were agitated or not. This was a 
dreadful trial : and no doubt the counterfeit sleep would 
immediately have been detected, when suddenly a 



68 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

dreadful spectacle drew off the attention of the murderer. 
Solemnly, and in ghostly silence, uprose in her dying 
delirium the murdered girl ; she stood upright, she 
walked steadily for a moment or two, she bent her steps 
towards the door. The murderer turned away to pur- 
sue her ; and at that moment the boy, feeling that his 
one solitary chance was to fly while this scene was in 
progress, bounded out of bed. On the landing at the 
head of the stairs was one murderer, at the foot of the 
stairs was the other : who could believe that the boy had 
the shadow of a chance for escaping ? And yet, in the 
most natural way, he surmounted all hindrances. In 
the boy's horror, he laid his left hand on the balustrade, 
and took a flying leap over it, which landed him at the 
bottom of the stairs, without having touched a single 
stair. He had thus effectually passed one of the mur- 
derers : the other, it is true, was still to be passed ; 
and this would have been impossible but for a sudden 
accident. The landlady had been alarmed by the faint 
scream of the young woman ; had hurried from her pri- 
vate room to the girl's assistance ; but at the foot of 
the stairs had been intercepted by the younger brother, 
and was at this moment struggling with him. The 
confusion of this life-and-death conflict had allowed the 
boy to whirl past them. Luckily he took a turn into a 
kitchen, out of which was a back-door, fastened by a 
single bolt, that ran freely at a touch ; and through this 
door he rushed into the open fields. But at this moment 
the elder brother was set free for pursuit by the death 
of the poor girl. There is no doubt, that in her deli- 
rium the image moving through her thoughts was that 
of the club, which met once a- week. She fancied it 
no doubt sitting ; and to this room, for help and for 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 69 

safety she staggered along ; she entered it, and within 
the doorway once more she dropped down, and instantly 
expired. Her murderer, who had followed her closely, 
now saw himself set at liberty for the pursuit of the boy. 
At this critical moment, all was at stake ; unless the 
boy were caught, the enterprise was ruined. He passed 
his brother, therefore, and the landlady without pausing, 
and rushed through the open door into the fields. By 
a single second, perhaps, he was too late. The boy 
was keenly aware, that if he continued in sight, he 
would have no chance of escaping from a powerful 
young man. He made, therefore, at once for a ditch, 
into which he tumbled headlong. Had the murderer 
ventured to make a leisurely examination of the nearest 
ditch, he would easily have found the boy — made so 
conspicuous by his white shirt. But he lost all heart, 
upon failing at once to arrest the boy's flight. And 
every succeeding second made his despair the greater. 
If the boy had really effected his escape to the neigh- 
boring farm-house, a party of men might be gathered 
within five minutes ; and already it might have become 
difficult for himself and his brother, unacquainted with 
the field paths, to evade being intercepted. Nothing 
remained, therefore, but to summon his brother away. 
Thus it happened that the landlady, though mangled, 
escaped with life, and eventually recovered. The land- 
lord owed his safety to the stupefying potion. And the 
baffled murderers had the misery of knowing that their 
dreadful crime had been altogether profitless. The 
road, indeed, was now open to the club-room ; and, 
probably, forty seconds would have sufficed to carry 
off the box of treasure, which afterwards might have 
been burst open and pillaged at leisure. But the fear of 



70 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

intercepting enemies was too strongly upon them ; and 
they fled rapidly by a road which carried them actually 
within six feet of the lurking boy. That night they 
passed through Manchester. When daylight returned, 
they slept in a thicket twenty miles distant from the 
scene of their guilty attempt. On the second and third 
nights, they pursued their march on foot, resting again 
during the day. About sunrise on the fourth morning, 
they were entering some village near Kirby Lonsdale, 
in Westmoreland. They must have designedly quitted 
the direct line of route ; for their object was Ayrshire, 
of which county they were natives ; and the regular 
road would have led them through Shap, Penrith, 
Carlisle. Probably they were seeking to elude the 
persecution of the stage-coaches, which, for the last 
thirty hours, had been scattering at all the inns and 
road-side cabarets hand-bills describing their persons 
and dress. It happened (perhaps through design) that 
on this fourth morning they had separated, so as to 
enter the village ten minutes apart from each other. 
They were exhausted and footsore. In this condition 
it was easy to stop them. A blacksmith had silently 
reconnoitred them, and compared their appearance 
with the description of the hand-bills. They were then 
easily overtaken, and separately arrested. Their trial 
and condemnation speedily followed at Lancaster; and 
in those days it followed, of course, that they were 
executed. Otherwise their case fell so far within the 
sheltering limits of what would now be regarded as 
extenuating circumstances — that, whilst a murder 
more or less was not to repel them from their object, 
very evidently they were anxious to economize the 
bloodshed as much as possible. Immeasurable, there- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 71 

fore, was the interval which divided them from the 
monster Williams. They perished on the scaffold : 
Williams, as I have said, by his own hand ; and, in 
obedience to the law as it then stood, he was buried in 
the centre of a quadrivium, or conflux of four roads (in 
this case four streets), with a stake driven through his 
heart. And over him drives for ever the uproar of un- 
resting London ! 



THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIELE TO 
MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 



It is sometimes said, that a religious messenger from 
God does not come amongst men for the sake of teach- 
ing truths in science, or of correcting errors in science. 
Most justly is this said : but often in terms far too 
feeble. For generally these terms are such as to 
imply, that, although no direct and imperative function 
of his mission, it was yet open to him, as a permissible 
function — that, although not pressing with the force 
of an obligation upon the missionary, it was yet at his 
discretion — if not to correct other men's errors, yet 
at least in his own person to speak with scientific pre- 
cision. I contend that it was not. I contend, that to 
have uttered the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c., 
at the era of new-born Christianity, was not only 
helow and beside the purposes of a religion, but would 
have been against them. Even upon errors of a far 
more important class than errors in science can ever 
be — superstitions, for instance, that degraded the very 
idea of God; prejudices and false usages, that laid 
waste human happiness (such as slavery, and many 
hundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned), 
the rule evidently acted upon by the Founder of Chris- 
tianity was this — Given the purification of the well- 
head, once assumed that the fountains of truth are 

[72] 



THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE, ETC. 73 

cleansed, all these derivative currents of evil will 
cleanse themselves. As a general rule, the branches 
of error were disregarded, and the roots only attacked. 
If, then, so lofty a station was taken with regard even 
to such errors as really had moral and spiritual rela- 
tions, how much more with regard to the comparative 
trifles (as in the ultim.ate relations of human nature 
they are) of merely human science ! But, for my 
part, I go further, and assert, that upon three reasons 
it was impossible for any messenger from God (or 
offering himself in that character) to have descended 
into the communication of truth merely scientific, or 
economic, or worldly. And the three reasons are 
these : — First, Because such a descent would have 
degraded his mission, by lowering it to the base level 
of a collusion with human curiosity, or (in the most 
favorable case) of a collusion with petty and transitory 
interests. Secondly, Because it would have ruined his 
mission, by disturbing its free agency, and misdirecting 
its energies, in tv/o separate modes : first, by destroy- 
ing the spiritual auctoritas (the prestige and consider- 
ation) of the missionary; secondly, by vitiating the 
spiritual atmosphere of his audience — that is, cor- 
rupting and misdirecting the character of their thoughts 
and expectations. He that in the early days of Chris- 
tianity should have proclaimed the true theory of the 
solar system, or that by any chance word or allusion 
should then, in a condition of man so little prepared 
to receive such truths, have asserted or assumed the 
daily motion of the earth on its own axis, or its annual 
motion round the sun, would have found himself en- 
tangled at once and irretrievably in the following 
unmanageable consequences: — First of all, and in- 
7 



74 THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE 

stantaneously, he would have been roused to the alarm- 
in.o- fact, that, by this dreadful indiscretion he himself, 
the professed deliverer of a new and spiritual religion, 
had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his audi- 
ence. He would find that he had awakened within 
them the passion of curiosity — the most unspiritual 
of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. 
The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would 
be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may 
estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest 
palliation. For in what condition would the reputation 
of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an 
intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant 
— and to recant what to the whole body of his hearers 
would wear the character of a lunatic proposition. 
Such considerations might possibly induce him not to 
recant. But in that case the consequences are far 
worse. Having once allowed himself to sanction what 
nis hearers regard as the most monstrous of paradoxes, 
he has no liberty of retreat open to him. He must 
stand to the promises of his own acts. Uttering the 
first truth of a science, he is pledged to the second ; 
taking the main step, he is committed to all which 
follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless con- 
troversies which science in every stage provokes, and 
in none more than in the earliest. Starting, besides, 
from the authority of a divine mission, he could not 
(as others might) have the privilege of selecting arbi- 
trarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon 
all ; if upon science, then upon art ; if upon art and 
science, then upon every branch of social economy 
his reformations and advances are equally due — due 
as to all, if due as to any. To move in one direction, 



TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 75 

is constructively to undertake for all. Without power 
to retreat, he has thus thrown the intellectual interests 
of his followers into a channel utterly alien to the 
purposes of a spiritual mission. 

The spiritual mission, therefore, the purpose for 
which only the religious teacher was sent, has now 
perished altogether — overlaid and confounded by the 
merely scientific wranglings to which his own incon- 
siderate precipitance has opened the door. But sup- 
pose at this point that the teacher, aware at length of 
the mischief which he has caused, and seeing that the 
fatal error of uttering one solitary novel truth upon a 
matter of mere science is by inevitable consequence 
to throw him upon a road leading altogether away 
from the proper field of his mission, takes the laudable 
course of confessing his error, and of attempting a 
return into his proper spiritual province. This may be 
his best course ; yet, after all, it will not retrieve his 
lost ground. He returns with a character confessedly 
damaged. His very excuse rests upon the blindness 
and shortsightedness which forbade his anticipating the 
true and natural consequences. Neither will his own 
account of the case be generally accepted. He will 
not be supposed to retreat from further controversy, as 
inconsistent with spiritual purposes, but because he 
finds himself unequal to the dispute. And, in the 
very best case, he is, by his own acknowledgment, 
tainted with human infirmity. He has been ruined for 
a servant of inspiration ; and how ? By a process, let 
it be remembered, of which all the steps are inevitable 
under the same agency : that is, in the case of any 
primitive Christian teacher having attempted to speak 
the language of scientific truth in dealing with the 



7-6 THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE 

phenomena of astronomy, geology, or of any merely 
human knowledge. 

Now, thirdly and lastly, m order to try the question 
in an extreme form, let it be supposed that, aided by 
powers of working miracles, some early apostle of 
Christianity should actually have succeeded in carrying 
through the Copernican system of astronomy, as an 
article of blind belief, sixteen centuries before the pro- 
gress of man's intellect had qualified him for naturally 
developing that system. What, in such a case, would 
be the true estimate and valuation of the achievement ? 
Simply this, that he had thus succeeded in cancelling 
and counteracting a determinate scheme of divine dis- 
cipline and training for man. Wherefore did God 
give to man the powers for contending with scientific 
difficulties ? Wherefore did he lay a secret train of 
continual occasions, that should rise, by relays, through 
scores of generations, for provoking and developing 
those activities in man's intellect, if, after all, he is to 
send a messenger of his own, more than human, to 
intercept and strangle all these great purposes ? This 
is to mistake the very meaning and purposes of a reve- 
lation. A revelation is not made for the purpose of 
showing to indolent men that which, by faculties al- 
ready given to them, they may show to themselves ; 
no : but for the purpose of showing that which the 
moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural 
light, allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, 
must every thoughtful person regard the notion, that 
God could wilfully interfere with his own plans, by 
accrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any 
other science, which he has commanded men, by 
qualifying men, to reveal for themselves. 



TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 77 

Even as regards astronomy — a science so nearly 
allying itself to religion by the loftiness and by the 
purity of its contemplations — Scripture is nowhere 
the parent of any doctrine, nor so much as the silent 
sanctioner of any doctrine. It is made impossible for 
Scripture to teach falsely, by the simple fact that 
Scripture, on such subjects, will not condescend to 
teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language 
of men (which at any rate it must do, in order to make 
itself understood), not by way of sanctioning a theory, 
but by way of using a fact. The Bible, for instance, 
uses (postulates) the phenomena of day and night, of 
summer and winter ; and, in relation to their causes, 
speaks by the same popular and inaccurate language 
which is current for ordinary purposes, even amongst 
the most scientific of astronomers. For the man of 
science, equally with the populace, talks of the sun as 
rising and setting, as having finished half his day's 
journey, &c., and, without pedantry, could not in 
many cases talk otherwise. But the results, which are 
all that concern Scripture, are equally true, whether 
accounted for by one hypothesis which is philosophi- 
cally just, or by another which is popular and erring. 

Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, 
the case is stronger. Here there is no opening for a 
compliance even with a language that is erroneous ; 
for no language at all is current upon subjects that 
have never engaged the popular attention. Here, 
where there is no such stream of apparent phenomena 
running counter (as in astronomy there is) to the real 
phenomena, neither is there any popular language op- 
posed to the scientific. The whole are abtruse specu- 
lations, even as regards their objects, nor dreamed of 



78 THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE 

as possibilities, either in their true aspects or their false 
aspects, till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore, 
nowhere allude to such sciences, either as taking the 
shape of histories, applied to processes current and in 
movement, or as taking the shape of theories applied 
to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cos- 
mogony, indeed, gives the succession of natural births ; 
and probably the general outline of such a succession 
will be more and more confirmed as geology ad- 
vances. But as to the time, the duration, of this suc- 
cessive evolution, it is' the idlest of notions that the 
Scriptures either have, or could have, condescended to 
human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the 
drama of this world. Genesis would no more have 
indulged so mean a passion with respect to the myste- 
rious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse 
with respect to its mysterious close. ' Yet the six days 
of Moses ! ' Days ! But is it possible that human 
folly should go the length of understanding by the 
Mosaical day^ the mysterious day of that awful agency 
which moulded the heavens and the heavenly host, no 
more than the ordinary nychthemeron or cycle of 
twenty-four hours? The period implied in a day^ 
when used in relation to the inaugural manifestation 
of creative power in that vast drama which introduces 
God to man in the character of a demiurgus or creator 
of the world, indicated one stage amongst six ; in- 
volving probably many millions of years. The silliest 
of nurses, in her nursery babble, could hardly suppose 
that the mighty process began on a Monday morning, 
and ended on Saturday night. If we are seriously to 
study the value and scriptural acceptation of scriptural 
words and phrases, I presume that our first business 



TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 79 

will be to collate the use of these words in one part 
of Scripture, with their use in other parts, holding the 
same spiritual relations. The creation, for instance, 
does not belong to the earthly or merely historical 
records, but to the spiritual records of the Bible ; to 
the same category, therefore, as the prophetic sections 
of the Bible. Now, in those, and in the Psalms, how 
do we understand the word day 7 Is any man so 
little versed in biblical language as not to know, that 
(except in the merely historical parts of the Jewish 
records) every section of time has a secret and sepa- 
rate acceptation in the Scriptures ? Does an cEon^ 
though a Grecian word, bear scripturally (either in 
Daniel or in St. John) any sense known to Grecian 
ears ? Do the seventy lueeks of the prophet mean 
weeks in the sense of human calendars ? Already the 
Psalms (xc), already St. Peter (2d Epist.), warn us 
of a peculiar sense attached to the word day in divine 
ears. And who of the innumerable interpreters un- 
derstands the twelve hundred and sixty days in Dan- 
iel, or his two thousand and odd days, to mean, by 
possibility, periods of twenty-four hours ? Surely the 
theme of Moses was as mystical, and as much entitled 
to the benefit of mystical language, as that of the 
prophets. 

The sum of this matter is this : — God, by a He- 
brew prophet, is sublimely described as the Revealer ; 
and, in variation of his own expression, the same pro- 
phet describes him as the Being 'that knoweth the 
darkness.' Under no idea can the relations of God to 
man be more grandly expressed. But of what is he 
the revealer ? Not surely of those things which he has 
enabled man to reveal for himself, but of those things 



80 THE TFwUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE, ETC. 

which, were it not through special light from heaven, 
must eternally remain sealed up in inaccessible 
darkness. On this principle we should all laugh at a 
revealed cookery. But essentially the same ridicule, 
not more, and not less, applies to a revealed astron- 
omy, or a revealed geology. As a fact, there is no 
such astronomy or geology : as a possibility, by the 
a priori argument which I have used (viz., that a 
revelation on such fields would counteract other ma- 
chineries of providence), there can be no such astro- 
nomy or geology in the Bible. Consequently there is 
-none. Consequently there can be no schism or feud 
upon these subjects between the Bible and the philoso- 
phies outside. 



SCHLOSSER'S LITERARY HISTORY OF THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

In the person of this Mr. Schlosser is exemplified a 
common abuse, not confined to literature. An artist 
from the Italian opera of London and Paris, making a 
professional excursion to our provinces, is received 
according to the tariff of the metropolis ; no one being 
bold enough to dispute decisions coming down from the 
courts above. In that particular case there is seldom 
any reason to complain — since really out of Germany 
and Italy there is no city, if you except Paris and 
London, possessing materials^ in that field of art, for 
the composition of an audience large enough to act as 
a court of revision. It would be presumption in the 
provincial audience, so slightly trained to good music 
and dancing, if it should afTect to reverse a judgment 
ratified in the supreme capital. The result, therefore, 
is practically just, if the original verdict was just ; 
what was right from the first cannot be made wrong- 
by iteration. Yet, even in such a case, there is some- 
thing not satisfactory to a delicate sense of equity ; for 
the artist returns from the tour as if from some new 
and independent triumph, whereas, all is but the 
reverberation of an old one ; it seems a new access 
of sunlight, whereas it is but a reflex illumination from 
satellites. 

[81] 



82 sciilosser's literary history 

In literature the corresponding case is worse. An 
author, passing by means of translation before a foreign 
people, ought de jure to find himself before a new 
tribunal ; but de facto ^ he does not. Like the opera 
artist, but not with the same p.ropriety, he comes before 
a court that never interferes to disturb a judgment, but 
only to re-affirm it. And he returns to his native 
country, quartering in his armorial bearings these new 
trophies, as though won by new trials, when, in fact, 
they are due to servile ratifications of old ones. When 
Sue, or Balzac, Hugo, or George Sand, comes before 
an English audience — the opportunity is invariably 
lost for estimating them at a new angle of sight. All 
who dislike them lay them aside — whilst those only 
apply themselves seriously to their study, who are 
predisposed to the particular key of feeling, through 
which originally these authors had prospered. And 
thus a new set of judges, that might usefully have 
modified the narrow views of the old ones, fall by 
mere inertia into the humble character of echoes 
and sounding-boards to swell the uproar of the original 
mob. 

In this way is thrown away the opportunity, not only 
of applying corrections to false national tastes, but 
oftentimes even to the unfair accidents of luck that 
befall books. For it is well known to all who watch 
literature with vigilance, that books and authors have 
their fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale 
of proportions from those that measure their merits. 
Not even the caprice or the folly of the reading public 
is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, 
the whole difference between an extensive circulation 
for one book, and none at all for another of about 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 83 

equal merit, belongs to no particular blindness in men, 
but to the simple fact, that the one lias^ whilst the 
other has not^ been brought efFectually under the eyes 
of the public. By far the greater part of books are 
lost, not because they are rejected, but because they 
are never introduced. In any proper sense of the 
word, very few books are published. Technically they 
are published ; which means, that for six or ten times 
they are advertised^ but they are not made known to 
attentive ears, or to ears prepared for attention. And 
amongst the causes which account for this difference in 
the fortune of books, although there are many, we 
may reckon, as foremost, personal accidents of position 
in the authors. For instance, with us in England it 
will do a bad book no ultimate service, that it is 
written by a lord, or a bishop, or a privy counsellor, or 
a member of Parliament — though, undoubtedly, il will 
do an instant service — it will sell an edition or so. 
This being the case, it being certain that no rank will 
reprieve a bad writer from final condemnation, the 
sycophantic glorifier of the public fancies his idol 
justified ; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not 
be saved by advantages of position in the author ; but 
a book moderately good will be extravagantly aided by 
such advantages. Lectures on Christianity^ that hap- 
pened to be respectably written and delivered, had 
prodigious success in my young days, because, also, 
they happened to be lectures of a prelate ; three times 
the ability would not have procured them any attention 
had they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet^ 
on the other hand, it is but justice to say, that, if 
written with three times less ability, lawn-sleeves would 
not have given them buoyancy, but, on the contrary, 



84 schlosser's literary history 

they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably ; whilst 
the curate, favored by obscurity, would have survived 
for another chance. So again, and indeed, more than 
so, as to poetry. Lord Carlisle, of the last generation, 
wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord 
Roscommon's, which, for one hundred and fifty years, 
the judicious public has allowed the booksellers to 
incorporate, along with other refuse of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth century, into the costly collections of 
the ' British Poets.' And really, if you will insist on 
odious comparisons, they were not so very much 
below the verses of an amiable prime minister known 
to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital stamina,, not 
only they fell, but, in falling, they caused the earl to 
reel much more than any commoner would have done. 
Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle, 
viz.. Lord Byron, because he brought real genius and 
power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage 
in a peerage and a very ancient descent. On these 
double wings he soared into a region of public interest, 
far higher than ever he would have reached by poetic 
power alone. Not only all his rubbish — which in 
quantity is great — passed for jewels, but also what are 
incontestably jewels have been, and will be, valued at 
a far higher rate than if they had been raised from 
less aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so 
gracious for real power, is any adventitious distinction 
from birth, station, or circumstances of brilliant noto- 
riety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to- 
be-respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant 
that ever the clouds dropped their rheum upon. She 
is always ready for Jacobinical scoffs at a man - for 
being a lord, if he happens to fail ; she is always 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTXTRY. 85 

ready for toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. 
Ah, dear sycophantic old lady, I kiss your syco- 
phantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke 
for your sake ! 

It would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to 
confound real merit and its accidents of position is at 
all peculiar to us or to our age. Dr. Sacheverel], by 
embarking his small capital of talent on the spring- 
tide of a furious political collision, brought back an 
ampler return for his little investment than ever did 
Wickliffe or Luther. Such was his popularity in the 
heart of love and the heart of hatred, that he would 
have been assassinated by the Whigs, on his triumphal 
progresses through England, had he not been canon- 
ized by the Tories. He was a dead man if he had not 
been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol. Neither 
is the case peculiar at all to England. Ronge, the 
ci-devant Romish priest (whose name pronounce as 
you would the English word wrongs supposing that it 
had for a second syllable the final a of ' sopha,' i. e., 
Wronguh), has been found a wrong-headed man by 
all parties, and in a venial degree is, perhaps, a stupid 
man ; but he moves about with more eclat by far than 
the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the 
man that burned down a miracle of beauty, viz., the 
temple of Ephesus, protesting, with tears in his eyes, 
that he had no other way of getting himself a name, 
has got it in spite of us all. He's booked for a ride 
down all history, whether you and I like it or not. 
Every pocket dictionary knows that Erostratus was 
that scamp. So of Martin, the man that parboiled, or 
par-roasted York Minster some ten or twelve years 
back ; that fellow will float down to posterity with the 
annals of the glorious cathedral : he will 



86 schlosser's literary history 

« Pursue tlie triumpli and partake the gale,' 

whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster are 
practically forgotten. 

These incendiaries, in short, are as well known as 
Ephesus or York ; but not one of us can tell, without 
humming and hawing, who it was that rebuilt the 
Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the 
time-honored Minster. Equally in literature, not the 
weight of service done, or the power exerted, is some- 
times considered chiefly — either of these must be 
very conspicuous before it will be considered at all — 
but the splendor, or the notoriety, or the absurdity, or 
even the scandalousness of the circumstances^ sur- 
rounding the author. 

Schlosser must have benefitted in some such adven- 
titious way before he ever could have risen to his Ger- 
man celebrity. What was it that raised him to his 
momentary distinction.? Was it something very wick- 
ed that he did, or something very brilliant that he 
said } I should rather conjecture that it must have 
been something inconceivably absurd which he pro- 
posed. Any one of the three achievements stands 
good in Germany for a reputation. But, however it 
were that Mr. Schlosser first gained his reputation, 
mark what now follows. On the wings of this equivo- 
cal reputation he flies abroad to Paris and London. 
There he thrives, not by any approving experience or 
knowledge of his works, but through blind faith in his 
original German public. And back he flies afterwards 
to Germany, as if carrying with him new and inde- 
pendent testimonies to his merit, and from two nations 
that are directly concerned in his violent judgments ; 
whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 87 

(iareless reverberation of his first German character, 
from those who have far too much to read for declining- 
aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare that 
eifort to themselves. Thus it is that German critics 
become audacious and libellous. Kohl, Von Raumer, 
Dr. Carus, physician to the King of Saxony, by means 
of introductory letters floating them into circles far 
above any they had seen in homely Germany, are 
qualified by our own negligence and indulgence for 
mounting a European tribunal, from which they pro- 
nounce malicious edicts against ourselves. Sentinels 
present arms to Von Raumer at Windsor, because he 
rides in a carriage of Queen Adelaide's ; and Von 
Raumer immediately conceives himself the Chancellor 
of all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to uni- 
versal Europe, upon all questions of art, manners, 
politics, or any conceivable intellectual relations of 
England, Schlosser meditates the same career. 

But have I any right to quote Schlosser's words 
from an English translation ? I do so only because 
this happens to be at hand, and the German not. Ger- 
man books are still rare in this country, though more 
(by one thousand to one) than they were thirty years 
ago. But I have a full right to rely 'on the English of 
Mr. Davison. 'I hold in my hand,' as gentlemen so 
often say at public meetings, ' a certificate from Herr 
Schlosser, that to quote Mr. Davison is to quote 7im.' 
The English translation is one which Mr. Schlosser 
'• durchgelesen hat^undfur deren genauigkeit und rich' 
tigkeit er liirgt [has read through, and for the ac- 
curacy and propriety of which he pledges himself]. 
Mr. Schossler was so anxious for the spiritual wel- 
fare of us poor islanders, that he not only read it 



88 scHLOSSEa's literary history 

through, but he has even avfmerksam durchgelesen it 
[read it through wide awake] unci gepruft [and care- 
fully examined it] ; nay, he has done all this in com- 
pany with the translator. ' Oh ye Athenians ! how 
hard do I labor to earn your applause ! ' And, as the 
result of such herculean labors, a second time he 
makes himself surety for its precision ; ' er hurgt also 
dofur wie fur seine eigne arheit ' [he guarantees it 
accordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Were 
it not for this unlimited certificate, I should have sent 
for the book to Germany. As it is, I need not wait ; 
and all complaints on this score I defy, above all from 
Herr Schlosser.^ 

In dealing with an author so desultory as Mr. 
Schlosser, the critic has a right to an extra allowance 
of desultoriness for his own share ; so excuse me, 
reader, for rushing at once in medias res. 

Of Swift, Mr. Schlosser selects for notice three 
works — the ' Drapier's Letters,' ' Gulliver's Travels,' 
and the ' Tale of a Tub.' With respect to the first, as 
it is a necessity of Mr. S. to be forever wrong in 
his substratum of facts, he adopts the old erroneous 
account of Wood's contract as to the copper coinage, 
and of the imaginary wrong which it inflicted on Ire- 
land. Of all Swift's villainies for the sake of popu- 
larity, and still more for the sake of wielding this 
popularity vindictively, none is so scandalous as this. 
In any new life of Swift the case must be stated de 
novo. Even Sir Walter Scott is not impartial ; and 
for the same reason as now forces me to blink it, viz., 
the difficulty of presenting the details in a readable 
shape. 'Gulliver's Travels' Schlosser strangely con- 
siders ' spun out to an intolerable extent.' Many evil 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKi". 89 

things might be said of Gulliver ; but not this. The 
captain is anything but tedious. And, indeed, it be- 
comes a question of mere mensuration, that can be 
settled in a moment. A year or two since I had in 
my hands a pocket edition, comprehending all the four 
parts of the worthy skipper's adventures within a sin- 
gle volume of 420 pages. Some part of the space was 
also wasted on notes, often very idle. Now the 1st 
part contains two separate voyages (Lilliput and Ble- 
fuscu), the 2d, one, the 3d, jive, and the 4th, one ; so 
that, in all, this active navigator, who has enriched 
geography, I hope, with something of a higher quality 
than your old muffs that thought much of doubling 
Cape Horn, here gives us nine great discoveries, far 
more surprising than the pretended discoveries of Sin- 
bad (which are known to be fabulous), averaging quam 
proxime, forty-seven small 16mo pages each. Oh you 
unconscionable German, built round in your own 
country with circumvallations of impregnable 4tos, 
oftentimes dark and dull as Avernus — that you will 
have the face to describe dear excellent Captain 
Lemuel Gulliver of RedrifF, and subsequently of New- 
ark, that ' darling of children and men,' as tedious. It 
is exactly because he is not tedious, because he does 
not shoot into German foliosity, that Schlosser finds 
him ' intolerahle.'' I have justly transferred to Gul- 
liver's use the words originally applied by the poet to 
the robin-redbreast, for it is remarkable that Gulliver 
and the Arabian Nights are amongst the few books 
where children and men find themselves meeting and 
jostling each other. This was the case from its first 
publication, just one hundred and tv/enty years since. 
' It was received,' says Dr. Johnson, ' with such 



90 SCHLOSSEPt's LITERARY HISTORY 

avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised 
before the second could be made — it was read by the 
high and the low, the learned and the illiterate. Crit- 
icism was lost in wonder. Now, on the contrary, 
Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises; 
which we could bear, if the criticism were even in- 
genious. Whereas, he utterly misunderstands Swift, 
and is a malicious calumniator of the captain who, 
luckily, roaming in Sherwood, and thinking, often 
with a sigh, of his little nurse,^ Glumdalclitch, would 
trouble himself slightly about what Heidelberg might 
say in the next century. There is but one example on 
our earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate 
applause as ' Gulliver ; ' and tliot was ' Don Quixote.' 
Many have been welcomed joyfully by a class — these 
two by a people. Now, could that have happened had 
it been characterized by dulne.ss ? Of all faults, it 
could least have had that. As to the ' Tale of a Tub,' 
Schlosser is in such Cimmerian vapors that no 
system of bellows could blow open a shaft or tube 
through which he might gain a glimpse of the English 
truth and daylight. It is useless talking to such a man 
on such a subject. I consign him to the attentions of 
some patriotic Irishman. 

Schlosser, however, is right in a graver reflection 
which he makes upon the prevailing philosophy of 
Swift, viz., that ' all his views were directed towards 
what was immediately beneficial, which is the charac- 
teristic of savages.' This is undeniable. The mean- 
ness of Swift's nature, and his rigid incapacity for 
dealing with the grandeurs of the human spirit, with 
religion, with poetry, or even with science, when it 
rose above the mercenary practical, is absolutely ap- 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 91 

palling. His own yaJioo is not a more abominable 
one-sided degradation of humanity, than is he himself 
under this aspect. And, perhaps, it places this inca- 
pacity of his in its strongest light, when we recur to 
the fact of his astonishment at a religious princess re- 
fusing to confer a bishoprick upon one that had treated 
the Trinity, and all the profoundest mysteries of Chris- 
tianity, not with mere scepticism, or casual sneer, but 
with set pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery. 
This dignitary of the church. Dean of the most con- 
spicuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full canonicals, 
made himself into a regular mountebank, for the sake 
of giving fuller effect, by the force of contrast, to the 
silliest of jests directed against all that was most 
inalienable from Christianity. Ridiculing such things, 
could he, in any just sense, be thought a Christian ? 
But, as Schlosser justly remarks, even ridiculing the 
peculiarities of Luther and Calvin as he did ridicule 
them. Swift could not be thought other than constitu- 
tionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philoso- 
pher, if made to understand the case, would be inca- 
pable of scofhng at any/orm, natural or casual, simple 
or distorted, which might be assumed by the most 
solemn of problems — problems that rest with the 
weight of worlds upon the human spirit — 

' Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.' 
the destiny of man, or the relations of man to God. 
Anger, therefore, Swift might feel, and he felt it * to 
the end of his most wretched life ; but what reasonable 
ground had a man of sense for astonishment — that a 
princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sin- 

* See Ms bitter letters to Lady Suffolk. 



92 schlosser's literary history 

cerely pious, should decline to place such a man upon 
an Episcopal throne ? This argues, beyond a doubt, 
that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion, 
irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes 
to everybody else its own plebeian feelings. People 
differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but 
by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it 
seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, 
of course, in her heart regard (in common with him- 
self ) all mysteries as solemn masques and mummeries, 
should pretend in a case of downright serious business, 
to pump up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid 
objection to a man of his shining merit. ' The Trinity^'' 
for instance, that he viewed as the password, which 
the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of 
the sentinel ; but, as soon as it had obtained admission 
for the party within the gates of the camp, it was 
rightly dismissed to oblivion or to laughter. No case 
so much illustrates Swift's essential irreligion ; since, 
if he had shared in ordinary human feelings on such 
subjects, not only he could not have been surprised at 
his own exclusion from the bench of bishops, after 
such ribaldries, but originally he would have abstained 
from them as inevitable bars to clerical promotion, 
even upon principles of public decorum. 

As to the style of Swift, Mr. Schlosser shows him- 
self without sensibility in his objections, as the often 
hackneyed English reader shows himself without phi- 
losophic knowledge of style in his applause. Schlosser 
thinks the style of Gulliver ' somewhat dull.' This 
shows Schlosser's presumption in speaking upon a 
point where he wanted, 1st, original delicacy of tact ; 
and, 2dly, familiar knowledge of English. Gulliver's 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 93 

Style is purposely touched slightly with that dulness of 
circumstantiality which besets the excellent, but ' some- 
what dull' race of men — old sea captains. Yet it 
wears only an aerial tint of dulness; the felicity of 
this coloring in Swift's management is, that it never 
goes the length of wearying, but only of giving a 
comic air of downright Wapping and Rotherhithe 
verisimilitude. All men grow dull, and ought to be 
dull, that live under a solemn sense of eternal danger, 
one inch only of plank (often worm-eaten) between 
themselves and the grave ; and, also, that see for ever 
one wilderness of waters — sublime, but (like the wil- 
derness on shore) monotonous. All sublime people, 
being monotonous, have a tendency to be dull, and 
sublime things also. Milton and yEschylus, the 
sublimest of men, are crossed at times by a shade of 
dulness. It is their weak side. But as to a sea cap- 
tain, a regular nor'-nor'-wester, and sou'-sou'-easter, 
he ought to be kicked out of the room if he is not dull. 
It is not ' ship-shape,' or barely tolerable, that he 
should be otherwise. Yet, after all, considering what 
I have stated about Captain Gulliver's nine voyages 
crowding into one pocket volume, he cannot really 
have much abused his professional license for being 
dull. Indeed, one has to look out an excuse for his 
being so little dull ; which excuse is found in the fact 
that he had studied three years at a learned university. 
Captain Gulliver, though a sailor, I would have you to 
know, was a gownsman of Cambridge : so says Swift, 
who knew more about the Captain than anybody now- 
a-days. Cantabs are all horsemen, ergo^ Gulliver was 
fit for any thing, from the wooden shoon of Cambridge 
up to the Horse Marines. 



94 schlosser's literary history 

Now, on the other hand, you, common-place reader, 
that (as an old tradition) believe Swift's style to be a 
model of excellence, hereafter I shall say a word to 
you, drawn from deeper principles. At present I con- 
tent myself with these three propositions, which over- 
throw if you can ; — 

1. That the merit, which justly you ascribe to Swift, 
is vernacular ity ; he never forgets his mother-tongue 
in exotic forms, unless we may call Irish exotic ; for 
Hibernicisms he certainly has. This merit, however, 
is exhibited — not, as you fancy, in a graceful artless- 
ness, but in a coarse inartificial ity. To be artless, and 
to be inartificial, are very different things ; as different 
as being natural and being gross ; as different as being 
simple and being homely. 

2. That whatever, meantime, be the particular sort 
of excellence, or the value of the excellence, in the 
style of Swift, he had it in common with multitudes 
beside of that age. De Foe wrote a style for all the 
world the same as to kind and degree of excellence, 
only pure from Hibernicisms. So did every honest 
skipper [Dampier was something more] who had occa- 
sion to record his voyages in this world of storms. So 
did many a hundred of religious writers. And what 
wonder should there be in this, when the main qualifi- 
cation for such a style was plain good sense, natural 
feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice 
in putting together the clockwork of sentences, so as to 
avoid mechanical awkwardness of construction, but 
above all the advantage of a subject^ such in its nature 
as instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should draw 
off attention from itself ? Such subjects are common ; 
but grand impassioned subjects insist upon a different 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 95 

treatment ; and there it is that the true difficulties of 
style commence. 

3. [Which partly is suggested by the last remark.] 
That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any 
time had the pleasure of conversing upon the subject of 
style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most 
sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, 
to talk most like blockheads), have invariably regarded 
Swift's style not as if relatively good \i. e. given a 
proper subject], but as if absolutely good — good un- 
conditionally, no matter what the subject. Now, my 
friend, suppose the case, that the Dean had been re- 
quired to write a pendant for Sh' Walter Raleigh's im- 
mortal apostrophe to Death, or to many passages that I 
will select in Sir Thomas Brown's ' Religio Medici,' 
and his ' Urn-burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural 
sections of his ' Holy Living and Dying,' do you know 
what would have happened ? Are you aware what sort 
of ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan would have 
cut ? About the same that would be cut by a forlorn 
scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotter- 
dam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as senes- 
chal to the festival of Belshazzar the king, before a 
thousand of his lords. 

Schlosser, after saying any thing right and true (and 
he really did say the true thing about Swift's essential 
irreligion), usually becomes exhausted, like a boa-con- 
strictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The boa 
gathers himself up, it is to be hoped for a long fit of 
dvspepsy, in which the horns and hoofs that he has 
swallowed may chance to avenge the poor goat that 
owned them. Schlosser, on the other hand, retires 
into a corner, for the purpose of obstinately talking 



96 schlosser's literary history 

nonsense, until the gong sounds again for a slight re- 
fection of sense. Accordingly he likens Swift, before 
he has done with him, to whom ? I might safely allow 
the reader three years for guessing, if the greatest of 
wagers were depending between us. He likens him to 
Kotzebue, in the first place. How faithful the resem- 
blance ! How exactly Swift reminds you of Count 
Benyowski in Siberia, and of Mrs. Haller moping her 
eyes in the ' Stranger ! ' One really is puzzled to say, 
according to the negro's logic, whether Mrs. H^aller is 
more like the Dean of St. Patrick's, or the Dean more 
like Mrs. Haller. Anyhow, the likeness is prodigious, 
if it is not quite reciprocal. The other terminus of the 
comparison is Wieland. Now there is some shadow 
of a resemblance there. For Wieland had a touch of 
the comico-cynical in his nature ; and it is notorious 
that he was often called the German Voltaire, which 
argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his fea- 
tures at intervals. Wieland's malice, however, was 
far more playful and genial than Swift's ; something of 
this is shown in his romance of ' Idris,' and oftentimes 
in his prose. But what the world knows Wieland by is 
his ' Oberon.' Now in this gay, musical romance of 
Sir Huon and his enchanted horn, with its gleams of 
voluptuousness, is there a possibility that any sugges- 
tion of a scowling face like Swift's should cross the 
festal scenes ? 

From Swift the scene changes to Addison and 
Steele. Steele is of less importance ; for, though a 
man of greater intellectual activity ^ than Addison, he 
had far less of genius. So I turn him out, as one would 
turn out upon a heath a ram that had missed his way 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 97 

into one's tulip preserve ; requesting him to fight for 
himself against Schlosser, or others that may molest 
him. But, so far as concerns Addison, I am happy to 
support the character of Schlosser for consistency, by 
assuring the reader that, of all the monstrosities uttered 
by any man upon Addison, and of all the monstrosities 
uttered by Schlosser upon any man, a thing which he 
says about Addison is the worst. But this I reserve for 
a climax at the end. Schlosser really puts his best leg 
foremost at starting, and one thinks he's going to mend ; 
for he catches a truth, viz., the following — that all the 
brilliances of the Queen Anne period (which so many 
inconsiderate people have called the Augustan age of 
our literature) ' point to this — that the reading public 
wished to be entertained, not roused to think ; to be 
gently moved, not deeply excited.' Undoubtedly what 
strikes a man in Addison, or icill strike him when indi- 
cated, is the coyness and timidity, almost the girlish 
shame, which he betrays in the presence of all the ele- 
mentary majesties belonging to impassioned or idealized 
nature. Like one bred in crowded cities, when first 
left alone in forests or amongst mountains, he is fright- 
ened at their silence, their solitude, their magnitude of 
form, or their frowning glooms. It has been remarked 
by others that Addison and his companions never rise 
to the idea of addressing the ' nation ' or the ' people ; ' 
it is always the ' town.' Even their audience was con- 
ceived of by them under a limited form. Yet for this 
they had some excuse in the state of facts. A man 
would like at this moment to assume that Europe and 
Asia were listening to him ; and as some few copies of 
his book do really go to Paris and Naples, some to 
Calcutta, there is a sort of legal fiction that such an 
9 



98 schlosser's literary history 

assumption is steadily taking root. Yet, unhappily, that 
ugly barrier of languages interferes. Schamyl, the 
Circassian chief, though much of a savage, is not so 
wanting in taste and discernment as to be backward in 
reading any book of yours or mine. Doubtless he 
yearns to read it. But then, you see, that infernal 
Tchirkass language steps between our book, the dar- 
ling, and him, the discerning reader. Now, just such a 
barrier existed for the Spectator in the travelling ar- 
rangements of England. The very few old heavies 
that had begun to creep along three or four main roads, 
depended so much on wind and weather, their chances 
of foundering were so uncalculated, their periods of 
revolution were so cometary and uncertain, that no 
body of scientific observations had yet been collected 
to warrant a prudent man in risking a heavy bale of 
goods ; and, on the whole, even for York, Norwich, or 
Winchester, a consignment of ' Specs ' was not quite a 
safe spec. Still, I could have told the Spectator who 
was anxious to make money, where he might have 
been sure of a distant sale, though returns would have 
been slow, viz., at Oxford and Cambridge. We know 
from Milion that old Hobson delivered his parcels 
pretty regularly eighty years before 1710. And, one 
generation before that, it is plain, by the interesting 
(though somewhat Jacobinical) letters ^ of Joseph Mode, 
the commenter on the Apocalypse, that news and poli- 
tics of one kind or other (and scandal of every kind) 
found out for themselves a sort of contraband lungs to 
breathe through between London and Cambridge ; not 
quite so regular in their systole and diastole as the tides 
of ebb and flood, but better than nothing. If you con- 
signed a packet into the proper hands on the 1st of 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 99 

May, 'as sure as death' to speak Scottice) it would be 
delivered within Sixty miles of the capital before mid- 
summer. Still there were delays ; and these forced a 
man into carving his world out of London. That 
excuses the word toivii. 

Inexcusable, however, were many other forms of ex- 
pression in those days, which argued cowardly feel- 
ings. One would like to see a searching investigation 
into the state of society in Anne's days — its extreme 
artificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the impas- 
sioned grandeurs, its shameless outrages upon all the 
decencies of human nature. Certain it is, that Addi- 
son (because everybody) was in that meanest of condi- 
tions which blushes at any expression of sympathy with 
the lovely, the noble, or the impassioned. The wretches 
were ashamed of their own nature, and perhaps with 
reason ; for in their own denaturalized hearts they read 
only a degraded nature. Addison, in particular, shrank 
from every bold and every profound expression as from 
an offence against good taste. He durst not for his life 
have used the word ' passion ' except in the vulgar sense 
of an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danced 
a hornpipe on the top of the ' monument ' as have 
talked of a ' rapturous emotion.' What would he have 
said ? Why, ' sentiments that were of a nature to prove 
agreeable after an unusual rate.' In their odious 
verses, the creatures of that age talk of love as some- 
thing that ' burns ' them. You suppose at first that 
they are discoursing of tallow candles, though you can- 
not imagine by what impertinence they address you^ 
that are no tallow-chandler, upon such painful subjects. 
And, when they apostrophize the woman of their heart 
(for you are to understand that they pretend to such an 



100 SCHLOSSEU'S LITERARY HISTORY 

organ), they beseech her to 'ease their pain.' Can 
human meanness descend lower ? As if the man, being 
ill from pleurisy, therefore had a right to take a lady for 
one of the dressers in an hospital, whose duty it would 
be to fix a burgundy-pitch plaster between his shoulders. 
Ah, the monsters ! Then to read of their Phillises and 
Strephons, and Cliloes, and Corydons — names that, by 
their very non-reality amongst names of flesh and blood, 
proclaim the fantasticalness of the life with which they 
are poetically connected — it throws me into such con- 
vulsions of rage, that I move to the window, and (with- 
out thinking what I am about) throwing it up, calling, 
' Police ! police ! ' What's iJiat for ? What can the 
police do in the business ? Why, certainly nothing. 
What I meant in my dream was, perhaps [but one for- 
gets loliat one meant upon recovering one's temper], 
that the police should take Strephon and Corydon into 
custody, whom I fancied at the other end of the room. 
And really the justifiable fury, that arises upon recalling 
such abominable attempts at bucolic sentiments in such 
abominable language, sometimes transports me into a 
luxurious vision sinking back through one hundred and 
thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John 
and Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, 
with many others beside, all cudgelled in a round robin, 
none claiming precedency of another, none able to 
shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to 
recall me to milder thoughts by saying, ' But surely, 
my friend, you never could wish to see Addison cudg- 
elled ? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled with- 
out end, if the police can show any warrant for doing 
it But Addison was a man of great genius.' True, 
he was so. I recollect it suddenly, and will back out 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 101 

of any angry things that I have been misled into saying 
by Schlosser, who, by-the-bye, was right, after all, for 
a wonder. 

But now I will turn my whole fury in vengeance 
upon Schlosser. And, looking round for a stone to 
throw at him, I observe this. Addison could not be so 
entirely careless of exciting the public to think and 
feel, as Schlosser pretends, when he took so much 
pains to inoculate that public with a sense of the Mil- 
tonic grandeur. The ' Paradise Lost ' had then been 
published barely forty years, which was nothing in an 
age without reviews ; the editions were still scanty ; 
and though no Addison could eventually promote, for 
the instant he quickened, the circulation. If I recol- 
lect, Tonson's accurate revision of the text followed 
immediately upon Addison's papers. And it is certain 
that Addison 6 must have diffused the knowledge of 
Milton upon the continent, from signs that soon fol- 
lowed. But does not this prove that I myself have 
been in the wrong as well as Schlosser ? No : that 's 
impossible. Schlosser 's always in the wrong; but it's 
the next thing to an impossibility that I should be de- 
tected in an error : philosophically speaking, it is sup- 
posed to involve a contradiction. ' But surely I said 
the very same thing as Schlosser by assenting to what 
he said.' Maybe I did : but then I have time to make 
a distinction, because my article is not yet finished ; 
we are only at page six or seven ; whereas Schlosser 
can't make any distinction now, because his book's 
printed ; and his list of errata (which is shocking 
though he does not confess to the thousandth part), is 
actually published. My distinction is — that, though 
Addison generally hated the impassioned, and shrank 



102 schlosser's literary history 

from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it 
combined with forms of hfe and fleshy reahties (as 
in dramatic works), but not when it combined with 
elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence, he did 
not read, and did not like Shakspeare ; the music was 
here too rapid and life-like : but he sympathized pro- 
foundly with the solemn cathedral chanting of Milton. 
An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick 
changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a 
more stationary key of solemnity he could. Indeed, 
this difference is illustrated daily. A long list can be 
cited of passages in Shakspeare, which have been 
solemnly denounced by many eminent men (all block- 
heads) as ridiculous : and if a man does find a passage 
in a tragedy that displeases him, it is sure to seem 
ludicrous : witness the indecent exposures of them- 
selves made by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions 
beside of bilious people. Whereas, of all the shameful 
people (equally billions and not less bilious) that have 
presumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thought 
him ludicrous, but only dull and somnolent. In 'Lear' 
and in ' Hamlet,' as in a human face agitated by 
passion, are many things that tremble on the brink 
of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small 
range of sympathy or intellect. But no man ever 
found the starry heavens ludicrous, though many find 
them dull, and prefer a near view of a brandy flask. 
So in the solemn wheelings of the Miltonic movement, 
Addison could find a sincere delight. But the sub- 
limities of earthly misery and of human frenzy were 
for him a book sealed. Beside all which, Milton re- 
newed the types of Grecian beauty as to form^ whilst 
Shakspeare, without designing at all to contradict these 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 103 

types, did so, in effect, by his fidelity to a new nature, 
radiating from a Gothic centre. 

Jn the midst, however, of much just feeling, which 
one could only wish a little deeper, in the Addisonian 
papers on ' Paradise Lost,' there are some gross blun- 
ders of criticism, as there are in Dr. Johnson, and 
from the self-same cause — an understanding suddenly 
palsied from defective passion. A feeble capacity of 
passion must, upon a question of passion, constitute a 
feeble range of intellect. But, after all, the worst 
thing uttered by Addison in these papers is, not 
against Milton, but meant to be complimentary. To- 
wards enhancing the splendor of the great poem, he 
tells us that it is a Grecian palace as to amplitude, 
symmetry, and architectural skill : but being in the 
English language, it is to be regarded as if built in 
brick ; whereas, had it been so happy as to be written 
in Greek, then it would have been a palace built in 
Parian marble. Indeed! that's smart — 'that's hand- 
some, I calculate.' Yet, before a man undertakes to 
sell his mother-tongue, as old pewter trucked against 
gold, he should be quite sure of his own metallurgic 
skill ; because else, the gold may happen to be copper, 
and the pewter to be silver. Are you quite sure, my 
Addison, that you have understood the powers of this 
language which you toss away so lightly, as an old 
tea-kettle ? Is it a ruled case that you have exhausted 
its resources ? Nobody doubts your grace in a certain 
line of composition, but it is only one line among 
many, and it is far from being amongst the highest. 
It is dangerous, without examination, to sell even old 
kettles ; misers conceal old stockings filled with 
guineas in old tea-kettles ; and we all know that 



104 schlosser's literary history 

Aladdin's servant, by exchanging an old lamp for a 
new one, caused an Iliad of calamities : his master's 
palace jumped from Bagdad to some place on the road 
to Ashantee ; Mrs. Aladdin and the piccaninies were 
carried off as inside passengers ; and Aladdin himself 
only escaped being lagged, for a rogue and a conjuror, 
by a flying jump after his palace. Now, mark the 
folly of man. Most of the people I am going to men- 
tion subscribed, generally, to the supreme excellence 
of Milton ; but each wished for a little change to be 
made — which, and which only was wanted to per- 
fection. Dr. Johnson, though he pretended to be 
satisfied with the ' Paradise Lost,' even in what he re- 
garded as the undress of blank verse, still secretly 
wished it in rhyme. That's No. 1. Addison, though 
quite content with it in English, still could have wished 
it in Greek. That's No. 2. Bentley, though admiring 
the blind old poet in the highest degree, still observed, 
smilingly, that after all he was blind ; he, therefore, 
slashing Dick, could have wished that the great man 
had always been surrounded by honest people ; but, 
as that was not to be, he could have wished that his 
amanuensis has been hanged ; but, as that also had 
become impossible, he could wish to do execution upon 
him in effigy, by sinking, burning, and destroying his 
handywork — upon which basis of posthumous justice, 
he proceeded to amputate all the finest passages in the 
poem. Slashing Dick was No. 3. Payne Knight was 
a severer man even than slashing Dick ; he professed 
to look upon the first book of ' Paradise Lost' as the 
finest thing that earth had to show ; but, for that very 
reason, he could have wished, by your leave, to see 
the other eleven books sawed off, and sent overboard ; 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 105 

because, though tolerable perhaps in another situation, 
they really were a national disgrace, when standing be- 
hind that unrivalled portico of book 1. There goes 
No. 4. Then came a fellow, whose name was either 
not on his title page, or I have forgotten it, that pro- 
nounced the poem to be laudable, a-nd full of good 
materials ; but still he could have wished that the ma- 
terials had been put together in a more workmanlike 
manner ; which kind office he set about himself. He 
made a general clearance of all lumber : the ex- 
pression of every thought he entirely re-cast : and he 
fitted up the metre with beautiful patent rhymes ; not, 
I believe, out of any consideration for Dr. Johnson's 
comfort, but on principles of mere abstract decency : 
as it was, the poem seemed naked, and yet was not 
ashamed. There went No. 5. Him succeeded a 
droller fellow than any of the rest. A French book- 
seller had caused a prose French translation to be 
made of the ' Paradise Lost,' without particularly no- 
ticing its English origin, or at least not in the title 
page. Our friend. No. 6, getting hold of this as an 
original French romance, translated it back into En- 
glish prose, as a satisfactory novel for the season. His 
little mistake was at length discovered, and communi- 
cated to him with shouts of laughter ; on which, after 
considerable kicking and plunging (for a man cannot 
but turn restive when he finds that he has not only got 
the wrong sow by the ear, but actually sold the sow to a 
bookseller), the poor translator was tamed into sulki- 
ness ; in which state he observed that he could have 
wished his own work, being evidently so much supe- 
rior to the earliest form of the romance, might be 
admitted by the courtesy of England to take the pre- 



106 schlosser's literary history 

cedency as the original ' Paradise Lost,' and to super- 
sede the very rude performance of ' Mihon, Mr. 
John.' 7 

Schlosser makes the astounding assertion, that a com- 
pliment of Boileau to Addison,. and a pure compliment 
of ceremony upon Addison's early Latin verses, was 
(credit e poster i !) the making of Addison in England. 
Understand, Schlosser, that Addison's Latin verses 
were never heard of by England, until long after his 
English prose had fixed the public attention upon him ; 
his Latin reputation was a slight reaction from his 
English reputation : and, secondly, understand that 
Boileau had at no time any such authority in England 
as to make anybody's reputation ; he had first of all to 
make his own. A sure proof of this is, that Boileau's 
name was first published to London, by Prior's bur- 
lesque of what the Frenchman had called an ode. 
This gasconading ode celebrated the passage of the 
Rhine in 1672, and the capture of that famous fortress 
called Skink (' le fameux fort de '), by Louis XIV., 
known to London at the time of Prior's parody by the 
name of 'Louis Baboon.' ^ That was not likely to 
recommend Master Boileau to any of the allies against 
the said Baboon, had it ever been heard of out of France. 
Nor was it likely to make him popular in England, 
that his name was first mentioned amongst shouts of 
laughter and mockery. It is another argument of the 
slight notoriety possessed by Boileau in England — 
that no attempt was ever made to translate even his 
satires, epistles, or ' Lutrin,' except by booksellers' 
hacks ; and that no such version ever took the slightest 
root amongst ourselves, from Addison's day to this 
very summer of 1847. Boileau was essentially, and 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 107 

in two senses, viz., both as to mind and as to influence, 
un homme borne. 

Addison's 'Blenheim' is poor enough; one might 
think it a translation from some German original of 
those times. Gottsched's aunt, or Bodmer's wet-nurse, 
might have written it; but still no fibs even as to 
' Blenheim.' His ' enemies ' did not say this thing 
against ' Blenheim ' ' aloud,' nor his friends that thing 
against it ' softly.' And why ? Because at that time 
(1704-5) he had made no particular enemies, nor any 
particular friends ; unless by friends you mean his 
Whig patrons, arid by enemies his tailor and co. 

As to ' Cato,' Schlosser, as usual, wanders in the 
shadow of ancient night. The English ' people,' it 
seems, so ' extravagantly applauded ' this wretched 
drama, that you might suppose them to have ' alto- 
gether changed their nature,' and to have forgotten 
Shakspeare. That man must have forgotten Shak- 
speare, indeed, and from ramollissement of the brain, 
who could admire ' Cato.' ' But,' says Schlosser, ' it 
was only a ' fashion ; ' and the English soon re- 
pented.' The English could not repent of a crime 
which they had never committed. Cato was not popu- 
lar for a moment, nor tolerated for a moment, upon 
any literary ground, or as a work of art. It was an 
apple of temptation and strife thrown by the goddess 
of faction between two infuriated parties. ' Cato,' 
coming from a man without Parliamentary connections, 
would have dropped lifeless to the ground. The Whigs 
have always affected a special love and favor for 
popular counsels : they have never ceased to give 
themselves the best of characters as regards public 
freedom. The Tories, as contradistinguished to the 



108 schlosser's literary history 

Jacobites, knowing that without their aid, the Revo- 
lution could not have been carried, most justly con- 
tended that the national liberties had been at least as 
much indebted to themselves. When, therefore, the 
Whigs put forth their man Cato to mouth speeches 
about liberty, as exclusively their pet, and about 
patriotism and all that sort of thing, saying insultingly 
to the Tories, ' How do you like that 7 Does that 
sting ? ' ' Sting, indeed ! ' replied the Tories ; ' not at 
all; it's quite refreshing to us, that the Whigs have 
not utterly disowned such sentiments, which, by their 
public acts, we really thought they had,'' And, ac- 
cordingly, as the popular anecdote tells us, a Tory 
leader. Lord Bolingbroke, sent for Booth who per- 
formed Cato, and presented him (populo spectante) 
with fifty guineas ' for defending so well the cause of 
the people against a perpetual dictator.' In which 
words, observe. Lord Bolingbroke at once asserted the 
cause of his own party, and launched a sarcasm against 
a great individual opponent, viz., Marlborough. Now, 
Mr. Schlosser, I have mended your harness : all right 
ahead ; so drive on once more. 

But, oh Castor and Pollux, whither — in what di- 
rection is it, that the man is driving us ? Positively, 
Schlosser, you must stop and let me get out. I '11 go 
no further with such a drunken coachman. Many 
another absurd thing I was going to have noticed, such 
as his utter perversion of what Mandeville said about 
Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and misap- 
prehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point- 
blank misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his 
official character, which was not that ' he could not 
prepare despatches in a good style,' but diametrically 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 109 

the opposite case — that he insisted too much on style, 
to the serious retardation of public business. But ail 
these things are as nothing to what Schlosser says 
elsewhere. He actually describes Addison, on the 
whole, as a ' dull prosaist,' and the patron of pedantry ! 
Addison, the man of all that ever lived most hostile 
even to what was good in pedantry, to its tendencies 
towards the profound in erudition and the non-popular ; 
Addison, the champion of all that is easy, natural, 
superficial, a pedant and a master of pedantry ! Get 
down, Schlosser, this moment ; or let me get out. 

Pope, by far the most important writer, English or 
Continental, of his own age, is treated with more ex- 
tensive ignorance by Mr. Schlosser than any other, and 
(excepting Addison) with more ambitious injustice. A 
false abstract is given, or a false impression, .of any 
one amongst his brilliant works, that is noticed at all ; 
and a false sneer, a sneer irrelevant to the case, at any 
work dismissed by name as unworthy of notice. The 
three works, selected as the gems of Pope's collection, 
are the ' Essay on Criticism,' the ' Rape of the Lock,' 
and the ' Essay on Man.' On the first, which (with 
Dr. Johnson's leave) is the feeblest and least interesting 
of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versifi- 
cation, like a metrical multiplication-table, of common- 
places the most mouldy with which criticism has baited 
its rat-traps ; since nothing is said worth answering, it 
is sufficient to answer nothing. The ' E,ape of the 
Lock' is treated with the same delicate sensibility that 
we might have looked for in Brennus, if consulted on 
the picturesque, or in Attila the Hun, if adjured to de- 
cide sesthetically, between two rival cameos. Attila is 



110 schlosser's liteeary history 

said (though no doubt falsely) to have described him- 
self as not properly a man so much as the Divine wrath 
incarnate. This would be fine in a melodrama, with 
Bengal lights burning on the stage. But, if ever he 
said such a naughty thing, he forgot to tell us what it 
was that had made him angry ; by what title did he 
come into alliance with the Divine wrath, which was 
not likely to consult a savage ? And why did his 
wrath hurry, by forced marches, to the Adriatic ? Now 
so much do people differ in opinion, that, to us, who 
look at him through a telescope from an eminence, 
fourteen centuries distant, he takes the shape rather of 
a Mahratta trooper, painfully gathering chout, or a 
cateran levying black-mail, or a decent tax-gatherer 
with an inkhorn at his bulton-hole, and supported by a 
select party of constabulary friends. The very natural 
instinct which Attila always showed for following the 
trail of the wealthiest footsteps, seems to argue a most 
commercial coolness in the dispensation of his wrath. 
Mr. Schlosser burns with the wrath of Attila against all 
aristocracies, and especially that of England. He 
governs his fury, also, with an Atilla discretion in many 
cases ; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, 
sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light^ 
troops, levying chout upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the 
dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's ' duty it was,' says this 
demoniac, to ' scourge the follies of good society,' and 
also ' to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely ? 
something short of a total rupture would have satisfied 
the claims of duty ? Possibly ; but it would not have 
satisfied Schlosser. And Pope's guilt consists in having 
made his poem an idol or succession of pictures repre- 
senting the gayer aspects of society as it really was, 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Ill 

and supported by a comic interest of the mock-lieroic 
derived from a playful machinery, instead of convert- 
ing it into a bloody satire. Pope", however, did not 
shrink from such assaults on the aristocracy, if these 
made any part of his duties. Such assaults he made 
twice at least too often for his own peace, and perhaps 
for his credit at this day. It is useless, however, to 
talk of the poem as a work of art, with one who sees 
none of its exquisite graces, and can imagine his 
countryman Zacharia equal to a competition with Pope. 
But this it may be right to add, that the ' Rape of the 
Lock ' was not borrowed from the ' Lutrin' of Boileau. 
That was impossible. Neither was it suggested by the 
' Lutrin.' The story in Herodotus of the wars between 
cranes and pigmies, or the Batracliomyomacliia (so 
absurdly ascribed to Homer) might have suggested the 
idea more naturally. Both these, there is proof that 
Pope had read : there is none that he had read the 
' Lutrin,' nor did lie read French with ease to himself. 
The ' Lutrin,' meantime, is as much below the ' Rape 
of the Lock' in brilliancy of treatment, as it is dissimilar 
in plan or the quality of its pictures. 

The ' Essay on Man ' is a more thorny subject. 
When a man finds himself attacked and defended from 
all quarters, and on all varieties of principle, he is be- 
wildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. He 
must not defy a bristling enemy, if he cares for repose ; 
he must not disown a zealous defender, though making 
concessions on his own behalf not agreeable to him- 
self; he must not explain away ugly phrases in one 
direction, or perhaps he is recanting the very words 
of his ' guide, philosopher, and friend,' who cannot 
safely be taxed with having first led him into tempta- 



112 schlosser's literary history 

tion ; he must not explain them away in another direc- 
tion, or he runs full lilt into the wrath of mother 
Church — who will soon bring him to his senses by 
penance. Long lents, and no lampreys allowed, would 
soon cauterize the proud flesh of heretical ethics. Pope 
did wisely, situated as he was, in a decorous nation, 
and closely connected, upon principles of fidelity under 
political suffering, with the Roman Catholics, to say 
little in his own defence. That defence, and any re- 
versionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the 
Quixote undertaker, he left — meekly but also slyly, 
humbly but cunningly — to those whom he professed 
to regard as greater philosophers than himself. All 
parties found their account in the affair. Pope slept in 
peace ; several pugnacious gentlemen up and down 
Europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each 
other's jackets ; and Warburton, the attorney, finally 
earned his bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a 
writer, who was aghast at finding himself first trampled 
on as a deist, and then exalted as a defender of the 
faith. Meantime, Mr. Schlosser mistakes Pope's cour- 
tesy, when he supposes his acknowledgments to Lord 
Bolingbroke sincere in their whole extent. 

Of Pope's ' Homer ' Schlosser think fit to say, amongst 
other evil things, which it really does deserve (though 
hardly in comparison with the German ' Homer' of the 
ear-splitting Voss), ' that Pope pocketed the subscription 
of the " Odyssey," and left the work to be done by his 
understrappers.' Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do 
thai any more. True it is, and disgraceful enough, 
that Pope (like modern contractors for a railway 
or a loan) let off* to sub-contractors several portions of 
the undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 113 

terms of his contracts. At least I know of people 
now-a-days (much better artists) that would execute 
such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping 
time at thirty per cent. less. But navies and bill- 
brokers, that are in excess now, then were scarce. 
Still the affair, though not mercenary, was illiberal in 
a higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more 
pointedly Pope's sense of the mechanic fashion, in 
which his own previous share of the Homeric labor 
had been executed. It was disgraceful enough, and 
needs no exaggeration. Let it, therefore, be reported 
truly : Pope personally translated one-half of the 
' Odyssey ' — a dozen books he turned out of his own 
oven : and, if you add the Batrachomyomachia, his 
dozen was a baker's dozen. The journeyman did the 
other twelve; were regularly paid; regularly turned 
off when the job was out of hand ; and never once had 
to ' strike for wages.' Flow much beer was allowed, 
I cannot say. This is the truth of the matter. So no 
more fibbing, Schlosser, if you please. 

But there remains behind all these labors of Pope, 
the ' Dunciad,' which is by far his greatest. T shall not, 
within the narrow bounds assigned to me, enter upon a 
theme so exacting; for, in this instance, I should have 
to fight not against Schlosser only, but against Dr. 
Johnson, who has thoroughly misrepresented the nature 
of the ' Dunciad,' and, ,consequently, could not measure 
its merits. Neither he, nor Schlosser, in fact, ever read 
more than a few passages of this admirable poem. But 
the villany is too great for a brief exposure. One thing 
only 1 will notice of Schlosser's misrepresentations. He 
asserts (not when directly speaking of Pope, but after- 
wards, under the head of Voltaire) that the French 
10 



114 schlosser's literary history 

author's trivial and random Temple de Gout ' shows the 
superiority in this species of poetry to have been greatly 
on the side of the Frenchman.' Let's hear a reason, 
though but a Schlosser reason, for this opinion : know, 
then, all men whom it concerns, that ' the Englishman's 
satire only hit such people as would never have been 
known without his mention of them, whilst Voltaire 
selected those who were still called great, and their re- 
spective schools.' Pope's men, it seems, never had 
been famous — Voltaire's might cease to be so, but as 
yet they had not ceased ; as yet they commanded in- 
terest. Now mark how I will put three bullets into 
that plank, riddle it so that the leak shall not be stopped 
by all the old hats in Heidelberg, and Schlosser will 
have to swim for his life. First, he is forgetting that, 
by his own previous confession, Voltaire, not less than 
Pope, had ' immortalized a great many insignificant 
persons ;' consequently, had it been any fault to do so, 
each alike was caught in that fault ; and insignificant 
as the people might be, if they could be ' immortalized,' 
then we have Schlosser himself confessing to the pos- 
sibility that poetic splendor should create a secondary 
interest where originally there had been none. Sec- 
ondly, the question of merit does not arise from the 
object of the archer, but from the style of his archery. 
Not the choice of victims, but the execution done is 
what counts. Even for continued failures it would 
plead advantageously, much more for continued and 
brilliant successes, that Pope fired at an object offering 
no sufficient breadth of mark. Thirdly, it is the 
■grossest of blunders to say that Pope's objects of satire 
were obscure by comparison with Voltaire's. True, 
the Frenchman's example of a scholar, viz., the French 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 115 

Salmaslus, was most accomplished. But so was the 
Englishman's scholar, viz., the English Bentley. Each 
was absolutely without a rival in his own day. But the 
day of Bentley was the very day of Pope. Pope's man 
had not even faded ; whereas the day of Salmasius, 
as respected Voltaire had gone by for more than half a 
century. As to Dacier, '-which Dacier, Bezonian?' 
The husband was a passable scholar — but madame 
was a poor sneaking fellow, fit only for the usher of a 
boarding-school. All this, however, argues Schlosser's 
two-fold ignorance — first, of English authors ; second, 
of the ' Dunciad ;' — else he would have known that 
even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer 
man than most of those alluded to by Voltaire. Gibber, 
though slightly a coxcomb, was born a brilliant man. 
Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom 
fell off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a 
pheasant, leaving him to ' mount far upwards with the 
swans of Thanes' — and, finally, let it not be forgot- 
ten, that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charterhouse, 
and Sir Isaac Newton, did not wholly escape tasting 
the knout ; if that rather impeaches the equity, and 
sometimes the judgment of Pope, at least it contributes 
to show the groundlessness of Schlosser's objection — 
that the population of the Dunciad, the characters that 
filled its stage, were inconsiderable. 

FOX AND BURKE. 

It is, or it would be, if Mr. Schlosser were himself 
more interesting, luxurious to pursue his ignorance as 
to facts, and the craziness of his judgment as to the 
valuation of minds, throughout his comparison of Burke 
with Fox. The force of antithesis brincrs out into a 



116 schlosser's literary history 

feeble life of meaning, what, in its own insulation, had 
been, languishing mortally into nonsense. The dark- 
ness of his ' Burke ' becomes visible darkness under the 
glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate com- 
monplaces of this ' Fox.' Fox is painted exactly as 
he loould have been painted fifty years ago by any pet 
subaltern of the Whig club, enjoying free pasture in 
Devonshire House. The practised reader knows well 
what is coming. Fox is ' formed after the model of the 
ancients ' — Fox is ' simple ' -^ — Fox is ' natural ' — Fox 
is 'chaste' — Fox is 'forcible;' why yes, in a sense, 
Fox is even ' forcible : ' but then, to feel that he was 
so, you must have heard him ; whereas, for forty years 
he has been silent. We of 1847, that can only read 
him, hearing Fox described u.s forcible, are disposed to 
recollect Shakspeare's Mr. Feeble amongst Falstaff's 
recruits, who also is described as forcible, viz., as the 
' most forcible Feeble.' And, perhaps, a better de- 
scription could not be devised for Fox himself — so 
feeble was he in matter, so forcible in manner ; so power- 
ful for instant effect, so impotent for posterity. In the 
Pythian fury of his gestures — in his screaming voice — 
in his directness of purpose. Fox would now remind 
you of some demon steam-engine on a railroad, some 
Fire-king or Salmoneus, that had counterfeited, because 
he could not steal, Jove's thunderbolts ; hissing, bub- 
bling, snorting, fuming ; demoniac gas, you think — 
gas from Acheron must feed that dreadful system of 
convulsions. But pump ^ out the imaginary gas, and, 
behold ! it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser rightly 
thinks, was all of a piece — simple in his manners, 
simple in his style, simple in his thoughts. No waters 
in him turbid with new ciystalizations ; everywhere the 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 117 

eye can see to the bottom. No music in him dark with 
Cassandra meanings. Fox, indeed, disturb decent gen- 
tlemen by ' allusions to all the sciences, from the in- 
tegral calculus and metaphysics to navigation ! ' Fox 
would have seen you hanged first. Burke, on the other 
hand, did all that, and other wickedness besides, which 
fills an 8vo page in Schlosser ; and Schlosser crowns 
his enormities by charging him, the said Burke (p. 99), 
with ' wearisome tedioiisness.'' Among my own ac- 
quaintances are several old women, who think on this 
point precisely as Schlosser thinks ; and they go further, 
for they even charge Burke with ' tedious wearisome- 
ncss.' Oh, sorrowful woe, and also woeful sorrow, 
when an Edmund Burke arises, like a cheeta or hunting 
leopard coupled in a tiger-chase with a German poodle. 
To think, in a merciful spirit, of the jungle — barely to 
contemplate, in a temper of humanity, the incompre- 
hensible cane-thickets, dark and bristly, into which that 
bloody cheeta will drag that unoffending poodle ! 

But surely the least philosophic of readers, who hates 
philosophy 'as toad or asp,' must yet be aware, that, 
where new growths are not germinating, it is no sort 
of praise to be free from the throes of growth- Where 
expansion is hopeless, it is little glory to have escaped 
distortion. Nor is it any blame that the rich fermenta- 
tion of grapes should disturb the transparency of their 
golden fluids. Fox had nothing new to tell us, nor did 
he hold a position amongst men that required or would 
even have allowed him to tell anything new. He was 
helmsman to a party ; what he had to do, though 
seeming to give orders, was simply to repeat their 
orders — ' Port your helm,' said the party ; ' Port it is,' 
replied the helmsman. But Burke was no steersman; 



118 sciilosser's literary history 

he was the Orpheus that sailed with the Argonauts ; he 
was their seer, seeing more in his visions than he 
always understood himself; he was their watcher 
through the hours of night ; he was their astrological 
interpreter. Who complains of a prophet for being a 
little darker of speech than a post-office directory ? or 
of him that reads the stars for being sometimes per- 
plexed ? 

But, even as to facts, Schlosser is always blunder- 
ing. Post-office directories would be of no use to him ; 
nor link-boys ; nor blazing tar-barrels. He wanders 
in a fog such as sits upon the banks of Cocytus. He 
fancies that Burk6, in his lifetime, was popular. Of 
course, it is so natural to be popular by means of ' wea- 
risome tediousness,^ that Schlosser, above all people, 
should credit such a tale. Burke has been dead just 
fifty years, come next autumn. I remember the time 
from this accident — that my own nearest relative 
stepped on a day of October, 1797, into that same 
suite of rooms at Bath (North Parade) from which, six 
hours before, the great man had been carried out to 
die at Beaconsfield. It is, therefore, you see, fifty 
years. Now, ever since then, his collective works 
have been growing in bulk by the incorporation of 
juvenile essays (such as his ' European Settlements,' 
his ' Essay on the Sublime,' on ' Lord Bolingbroke,' 
&c.), or (as more recently) by the posthumous publica- 
tion of his MSS. ; ^ and yet, ever since then, in spite 
of growing age and growing bulk, are more in demand. 
At this time, half a century after his last sigh, Burke 
is popular ; a thing, let me tell you, Schlosser, which 
never happened before to a writer steeped to his lips 
in personal politics. 'What a tilth of intellectual lava 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 119 

must that man have interfused amongst the refuse and 
scoria of such mouldering party rubbish, to force up a 
new verdure and laughing harvests, annually increas- 
ing for new generations ! Popular he is now, but 
popular he was not in his own generation. And how 
could Schlosser have the face to say that he was ? Did 
he never hear the notorious anecdote, that at one 
period Burke obtained the sobriquet of ' dinner-bell ? ' 
And why ? Not as one who invited men to a banquet 
by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a sig- 
nal to shoals in the House of Commons, for seeking 
refuge in a literal dinner from the oppression of his 
philosophy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoif of his 
opponents. Yet there must have been some founda- 
tion for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's 
career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this 
great orator 

' went on refining, 



And thought of convincing, whilst they thought of dining.' 

I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected of 
any popular body that it should be patient of abstrac- 
tions amongst the intensities of party-strife, and the 
immediate necessities of voting. No deliberative body 
would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbita- 
tions from public business than the agora of Athens, 
or the Roman senate. So far the error was in Burke, 
not in the House of Commons. Yet, also, on the 
other side, it must be remembered, that an intellect 
of Burke's combining power and enormous compass, 
could not, from necessity of nature, ^abstain from such 
speculations. For a man to reach a remote posterity, 
it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his 



120 schlosser's literary history 

voice over to them in a vast arch — it must sweep 
a parabola — which, therefore, rises high above the 
heads of those next to him, and is heard by the by- 
standers but indistinctly, like bees swarming in the 
upper air before they settle on the spot fit for hiving. 

See, therefore, the immeasurableness of miscon- 
ception. Of all public men, that stand confessedly in 
the first rank as to splendor of intellect, Burke was the 
least popular at the time when our blind friend 
Schlosser assumes him to have run off with the lion's 
share of popularity. Fox, on the other hand, as the 
leader of opposition, was at that time a household term 
of love or reproach, from one end of the island to the 
other. To the very children playing in the streets, 
Pitt and Fox, throughout Burke's generation, were 
pretty nearly as broad distinctions, and as much a 
war-cry, as English and French, Roman and Punic. 
Now, however, all this is altered. As regards the 
relations between the two Whigs whom Schlosser so 
steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent, 

' Now is the winter of our discontent 
Made glorious summer ' 

for that intellectual potentate, Edmund Burke, the man 
whose true mode of power has never yet been truly 
investigated ; whilst Charles Fox is known only as an 
echo is known, and for any real effect of intellect upon 
this generation, for anything but the 'whistling of a 
name,' the Fox of 1780-1807 sleeps where the 
carols of the larks are sleeping, that gladdened the 
spring-tides of those years — sleeps with the roses that 
glorified the beauty of their summers. ^^ 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 121 



JUNIUS. 

Schlosser talks of Junius, who is to him, as to many 
people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, 
Hermes Trismegistus, or the mediaeval Prester John. 
Not only are most people unable, to solve the enigma, 
but they have no idea of what it is that they are to 
solve. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three 
separate questions about Junius, of which he has evi 
dently no distinct knowledge, and cannot, therefore, 
have many chances to spare for settling them. The 
three questions are these : — A. Who was Junius ? B. 
What was it that armed Junius with a power so unac- 
countable at this day over the public mind ? C. Why, 
having actually exercised this power, and gained under 
his masque far more than he ever hoped to. gain, did 
this Junius not come forward in Ms own person, when 
all the legal danger had long passed away, to claim a 
distinction that for him (among the vainest of men) 
must have been more precious than his heart's blood ? 
The two questions, B and C, 1 have examined in past 
times, and I will not here repeat my explanations fur- 
ther than to say, with respect to the last, that the reason 
for the author not claiming his own property was this, 
because he dared not ; because it would have been 
infamy for him to avow himself as Junius ; because it 
would have revealed a crime and published a crime in 
his own earlier life, for which many a man is trans- 
ported in our days, and for less than which many a 
man has been in past days hanged, broken on the 
wheel, burned, gibbeted, or impaled. To say that he 
watched and listened at his master's key-holes, is 
nothing. It was not key-holes only that he made free 
11 



122 schlosser's literary history 

with, but keys ; he tampered with his master's seals ; 
he committed larcenies ; not, like a brave man, risk- 
ing his life on the highway, but petty larcenies — lar- 
cenies in a dwelling-house — larcenies under the op- 
portunities of a confidential situation — crimes which 
formerly, in the days of Junius, our bloody code never 
pardoned in villains of low degree. Junius was in the 
situation of Lord Byron's Lara, or, because Lara is a 
plagiarism, of Harriet Lee's Kraitzrer. But this man, 
because he had money, friends, and talents, instead of 
going to prison, took himself off for a jaunt to the 
continent. From the continent, in full security and in 
possession of the otiu77i cum dignitate, he negotiated 
with the government, whom he had alarmed by pub- 
lishing the secrets which he had stolen. He suc- 
ceeded. He sold himself to great advantage. Bought 
and sold he was ; and of course it is understood that, 
if you buy a knave, and expressly in consideration of 
his knaveries, you secretly undertake not to hang him. 
' Honor bright ! ' Lord Barrington might certainly 
have indicted Junius at the Old Bailey, and had a rea- 
son for wishing to do so ; but George IIL, who was a 
party to the negotiation, and all his ministers, would 
have said, with fits of laughter — ' Oh, come now, my 
lord, you must not do that. For, since we have bar- 
gained for a price to send him out as a member of 
council to Bengal, you see clearly that we could not 
possibly hang him iefore we had fulfilled our bargain. 
Then it is true we might hang him after he comes 
back. But, since the man (being a clever man) has a 
fair chance in the interim of rising to be Governor- 
General, we put it to your candor, Lorcf Barrington, 
whether it would be for the public service to hang his 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 123 

excellency ? ' In fact, lie might probably have been 
Governor-General, had his bad temper not over- 
mastered him. Had he not quarrelled so viciously 
with Mr. Hastings, it is ten to one that he might, by 
playing his cards well, have succeeded him. As it 
was, after enjoying an enormous salary, he returned to 
England — not Governor-General, certainly, but still 
in no fear of being hanged. Instead of hanging him, 
on second thoughts. Government gave him a red rib- 
bon. He represented a borough in Parliament. He 
was an authority upon Indian affairs. He was caressed 
by the Whig party. He sat at good men's tables. He 
gave for toasts — Joseph Surface sentiments at dinner 
parties — ' The man that betrays ' [something or 
other] — 'the man that sneaks into' [other men's 
portfolios, perhaps] — ' is ' — ay, what is he ? Why 
he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous 
mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and 
honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some 
such epitaph as this — 'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the 
man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a 
great knavery.' I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, the 
very able unmasker of Junius, for blinking the whole 
questions B and C. He it is that has settled the ques- 
tion A, so that it will never be re-opened by a man 
of sense. A man who doubts, after really reading Mr. 
Taylor's work, is not only a blockhead, but an irre- 
claimable blockhead. It is true that several men, 
among them Lord Brougham, whom Schlosser (though 
hating him, and kicking him) cites, still profess scepti- 
cism. But the reason is evident : they have not read 
the book, they have only heard of it. They are unac- 
quainted with the strongest arguments, and even with 



124 schlosser's literary history 

the nature of the evidence. i^ Lord Brougham, mdeed, 
is generally reputed to have reviewed Mr. Taylor's 
book. That may be : it is probable enough : what I 
am denying is not at all that Lord Brougham reviewed 
Mr. Taylor, but that Lord Brougham read Mr. Taylor. 
And there is not much wonder in that^ when we see 
professed writers on the subject — bulky writers — 
writers of Answers and Refutations, dispensing with 
the whole of Mr. Taylor's book, single paragraphs of 
which would have forced them to cancel their own. 
The possibility of scepticism, after really reading Mr. 
Taylor's book, would be the strongest exemplification 
upon record of Sancho's proverbial reproach, that a 
man ' wanted better bread than was made of wheat — ' 
would be the old case renewed from the scholastic 
grumblers ' that some men do not know when they are 
answered.' They have got their quietus^ and they still 
continue to 'maunder' on with objections long since 
disposed of. In fact, it is not too strong a thing to 
say — and Chief Justice Dallas did say something like 
it — that if Mr. Taylor is not right, if Sir Philip Fran- 
cis is not Junius, then was no man ever yet hanged on 
sufficient evidence. Even confession is no absolute 
proof. Even confessing to a crime, the man may be 
mad. Well, but at least seeing is believing: if the 
court sees a man commit an assault, M'ill not that 
suffice .? Not at all : ocular delusions on the largest 
scale are common. What's a court ? Lawyers have 
no better eyes than other people. Their physics are 
often out of repair, and whole cities have been known 
to see things that could have no existence. Now, all 
other evidence is held to be short of this blank seeing 
or blank confessing. But I am not at all sure of that. 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 125 

Circumstantial evidence, that multiplies indefinitely its 
points of interncxus with known admitted facts, is 
more impressive than direct testimony. If you detect 
a fellow with a large sheet of lead that by many (to 
wit seventy) salient angles, that by tedious (to wit 
thirty) reentrant angles, fits into and owns its sisterly 
relationship to all that is left of the lead upon your 
roof — this tight fit will weigh more with a jury than 
even if my lord chief justice should jump into the wit- 
ness-box, swearing that, with judicial eyes, he saw the 
vagabond cutting the lead whilst he himself sat at 
breakfast ; or even than if the vagabond should protest 
before this honorable court that he did cut the lead, in 
order that he (the said vagabond) might have hot rolls 
and coffee as well as my lord, the witness. If Mr. 
Taylor's body of evidence does not hold water, then is 
there no evidence extant upon any question, judicial or 
not judicial, that will. 

But I blame Mr. Taylor heavily for throwing away 
the whole argument applicable to B and C ; not as 
any debt that rested particularly upon him to public 
justice ; but as a debt to the integrity of his own book. 
That book is now a fragment ; admirable as regards 
A ; but (by omitting B and C) not sweeping the 
whole area of the problem. There yet remains, 
therefore, the dissatisfaction which is always likely to 
arise — not from the smallest allegatio falsi, but from 
the large suppressio veri. B, which, on any other 
solution than the one I have proposed, is perfectly un- 
intelligible, now becomes plain enough. To imagine 
a heavy, coarse, hard-working government, seriously 
affected by such a bauble as they would consider per- 
formances on the tight rope of style, is mere midsum- 



126 schlosser's literary history 

mer madness. ' Hold your absurd tongue,' would any 
of the ministers have said to a friend descanting on 
Junius as a powerful artist of style — ' do you dream, 
dotard, that this baby's rattle is the thing that keeps 
us from sleeping ? Our eyes are fixed on something 
else : that fellow, whoever he is, knows what he ought 
not to know ; he has had his hand in some of our 
pockets: he's a good locksmith, is that Junius; and 
before he reaches Tyburn, who knows what amount 
of mischief he may do to self and partners ? ' The 
rumor that ministers were themselves alarmed (which 
was the naked truth) travelled downwards; but the 
why did not travel ; and the innumerable blockheads 
of lower circles, not understanding the real cause of 
fear, sought a false one in the supposed thunderbolts 
of the rhetoric. Opera-house thunderbolts they were : 
and strange it is, that grave men should fancy news- 
papers, teeming (as they have always done) with 
Publicolas^ with Catos, with Algernon Sidneys^ able 
by such trivial small shot to gain a moment's attention 
from the potentates of Downing Street. Those who 
have despatches to write, councils to attend, and votes 
of the Commons to manage, think little of Junius 
Brutus. A Junius Brutus, that dares not sign by his 
own honest name, is presumably skulking from his 
creditors. A Timoleon, who hints at assassination in 
a newspaper, one may take it for granted, is a manu- 
facturer of begging letters. And it is a conceivable 
case that a twenty pound note, enclosed to Timoleon's 
address, through the newspaper office, might go far to 
soothe that great patriot's feelings, and even to turn 
aside his avenging dagger. These sort of people were 
not the sort to frighten a British Ministry. One laughs 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 127 

at the probable conversation between an old hunting 
squire coming up to comfort the First Lord of the 
Treasury, on the rumor that he was panic-struck. 
' What, surely, my dear old friend, you 're not afraid 
of Timoleon?' First Lord. — 'Yes, I am.' C. 
Gent. — ' What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in 
the papers ? ' F. L. — ' Yes, dreadfully.' C. Gent. — 
' Why, I always understood that these people were a 
son of shams — living in Grub Street — or where was 
it that Pope used to tell us they lived ? Surely you 're 
not afraid of Timoleon, because some people think 
he 's a patriot ? ' F. L. — ' No, not at all ; but I am 
afraid because some people think he 's a housebreaker ! ' 
In that character only could Timoleon become for- 
midable to a Cabinet Minister ; and in some such charac- 
ter must our friend, Junius Brutus, have made himself 
alarming to Government. From the moment that B 
is properly explained, it throws light upon C. The 
Government was alarmed — not at such moonshine as 
patriotism, or at a soap-bubble of rhetoric — but be- 
cause treachery was lurking amongst their own house- 
holds : and, if the thing went on, the consequences 
might be appalling. But this domestic treachery, 
which accounts for B, accounts at the same time for 
C. The very same treachery that frightened its 
objects at the time by the consequences it might 
breed, would frighten its author afterwards from 
claiming its literary honors by the remembrances it 
might awaken. The mysterious disclosures of official 
secrets, which had once roused so much consternation 
within a limited circle, and (like the French affair of 
the diamond necklace) had sunk into neglect only 
when all clue seemed lost for perfectly unravelling it, 



128 schlosser's literary history 

would revive in all its interest when a discovery came 
before the public, viz., a claim on the part of Francis 
to have written the famous letters, which must at the 
same time point a strong light upon the true origin of 
the treacherous disclosures. Some astonishment had 
always existed as to Francis — how he rose so sud- 
denly into rank and station : some astonishment always 
existed as to Junius, how he should so suddenly have 
fallen asleep as a writer in the journals. The coinci- 
dence of this sudden and unaccountable silence with 
the sudden and unaccountable Indian appointment of 
Francis ; the extraordinary familiarity of Junius, which 
had not altogether escaped notice^ with the secrets 
of one particular office, viz., the War Office ; the sud- 
den recollection, sure to flash upon all who remem- 
bered Francis, if again he should become revived into 
suspicion, that he had held a situation of trust in that 
particular War Office ; all these little recollections 
would begin to take up their places in a connected 
story : this and that^ laid together, would become clear 
as day-light ; and to the keen eyes of still surviving 
enemies — Home Tooke, 'little Chamier,' Ellis, the 
Fitzroy, Russell, and Murray houses — the whole pro- 
gress and catastrophe of the scoundrelism, the perfidy 
and the profits of the perfidy, would soon become as 
intelligible as any tale of midnight burglary from 
without, in concert with a wicked butler within, that 
was ever sifted by judge and jury at the Old 
Bailey, or critically reviewed by Mr. John Ketch at 
Tyburn. 

Francis was the man. Francis was the wicked 
butler within, whom Pharaoh ought to have hanged, 
but whom he clothed in royal apparel, and mounted 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 129 

upon a horse that carried him to a curule chair of 
honor. So far his burglary prospered. But, as gene- 
rally happens in such cases, this prosperous crime 
subsequently avenged itself. By a just retribution, the 
success of Junius, in two senses so monstrously exag- 
gerated — exaggerated by a romantic over-estimate of 
its intellectual power through an error of the public, 
not admitted to the secret — and equally exaggerated 
as to its political power by the government in the 
hush-money for its future suppression, became the 
heaviest curse of the successful criminal. This crim- 
inal thirsted for literary distinction above all other dis- 
tinction, with a childish eagerness, as for the amreeta 
cup of immortality. And, behold ! there the brilliant 
bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a solitude, un- 
claimed by any man; disputed with him (if he chose 
to claim it) by nobody ; and yet for his life he durst 
not touch it. He stood — he knew that he stood — in 
the situation of a murderer who has dropt an inestima- 
ble jewel upon the murdered body in the death-strug- 
gle with his victim. The jewel is his ! Nobody will 
deny it. He may have it for asking. But to ask is 
his death-warrant. ' Oh yes ! ' would be the answer, 
' here 's your jewel, wrapt up safely in tissue paper. 
But here's another lot that goes along with it — no 
bidder can take them apart — viz. a halter, also wrapt 
up in tissue paper.' Francis, in relation to Junius, 
was in that exact predicament. ' You are Junius ? 
You are that famous man who has been missing since 
1772 ? And you can prove it ? God bless me ! sir ; 
what a long time you 've been sleeping : every body's 
gone to bed. Well, then, you are an exceedingly 
clever fellow, that have had the luck to be thought ten 



130 schlosser's literary history, etc. 

times more clever than really you were. And also, 
you are the greatest scoundrel that at this hour rests 
in Europe unhanged!' — Francis died, and made no 
sign. Peace of mind he had parted with for a pea- 
cock's feather, which feather, living or dying, he durst 
not mount in the plumage of his cap. 



NOTES 



Note 1. Page 86. 

Even Pope, with all liis natural and reasonable interest in 
aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest 
in his mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he foiled 
to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest hap- 
pened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, 
the consequences would be far worse for the lord than the com- 
moner. There is, you see, a blind sort of compensation. 

Note 2. Page 88. 

Mr. Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too 
much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who 
ought to have a keen eye for the English yersion of his own book, 
after so much reading and study of it, has, however, overlooked 
several manifest errors. I do not mean to tax Mr. Davison with 
general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and in 
most cases successful as a dealer with the peculiarities of the 
German. But several cases of error I detect without needing the 
original : they tell their own story. And one of these I here 
notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to 
Schlosser, and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter — 
not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of 
vol. 2, in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his 
attempt to introduce the notion of negative greatness into Phi- 
losophy. JVegative greatness ! AVhat strange bird may that be ? 
Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus 7 Mr. Schlosser was not 
wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay 
upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic 

[131] 



132 NOTES. 

idea of negative quantities. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams 
into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most 
masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a 
negative quantitij [so generally misunderstood as a negation 
of quantity, and which even Sir Isaac Newton misconstrued as 
regarded its metaphysics], great would have been the service 
rendered to logic by Kant. But there is a greater. From this 
little brochure I am satisfied was derived originally the German 
regeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through 
the idea of polarity, indifference, &c. Oh, Mr. Sclilosser, you 
had not gepriift p. 5 of vol. 2. You skipped the notes. 

Note 3. Page 90. 

* Little nurse : ' — the word Glumdalclitch, in Brobding- 
nagian, absolutely means little nurse, and nothing else. It may 
seem odd that the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, 
however kind to him, by such an epithet as little; and the 
reader may fancy that Sherwood forest had put it into his head, 
where Robin Hood always called his right hand man 'Little 
John,' not although, but expressly because John stood seven feet 
high in his stockings. But the truth is — that Glumdalclitch 
was little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and 
(says the captain) ' little of her age,' being barely forty feet 
high. She had time to grow certainly, but as she had so much 
to do before she could overtake other women, it is probable that 
she would turn out what, in Westmoreland, they call a little 
stiffeiiger — very little, if at all, higher than a common English 
church steeple. 

Note 4. Page 96. 

* Activity.'' — It is some sign of this, as well as of the more 
thoroughly English taste in literature which distinguished Steele, 
that hardly twice throughout the ' Spectator ' is Shakspeare 
quoted or alluded to by Addison. Even these quotations he had 
from the theatre, or the breath of popular talk. Generally, if 
you see a line from Shakspeare, it is safe to bet largely that the 
paper is Steele's; sometimes, indeed, of casual contributors ; but, 
almost to a certainty, not a paper of Addison's. Another mark 
of Steele's superiority in vigor of uitellect is, that much oftener 



NOTES. 133 

in him than in otlier contributors strong thoughts came forward; 
harsh and disproportioned, perhaps, to the case, and never har- 
moniously developed with the genial grace of Addison, but origi- 
nal, and pregnant with promise and suggestion. 

Note 5. Page 98. 

• Letters of Joseph Mede,' published more than twenty years 
ago by Sir Henry Ellis. 

Note 6. Page 101. 

It is an idea of many people, and erroneously sanctioned by 
Wordsworth, that Lord Somers gave a powerful lift to the * Par- 
adise Lost.' He was a subscriber to the sixth edition, the first 
that had plates ; but this was some years before the Revolution 
of 1688, and when he was simply Mr. Somers, a barrister, with 
no effectual power of patronage. 

Note 7. Page 106. 

* Milton, Mr. John : ' — Dr. Johnson expressed his wrath, in 
an amusing way, at some bookseller's hack who, when employed 
to make an index, introduced Milton's name among the M's, un- 
der the civil title of— ' Milton, Mr. John.' 

Note 8. Page 106. 

' Louis Baboon : ^ — As people read nothing in these days 
that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished 
that allusions the most obvious to anything in the rear of our own 
time, needs explanation, Louis Baboon is Swift's jesting name 
for Louis Bourbon, i. e., Louis XIV. 

Note 9. Page 118. 

' Of his MSS. : ' — And, if all that I have heard be true, much 
has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. 
The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors' Com- 
mons, a well-known M. P. in forgotten days, and Windham, a 
man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in 
connection with forgotten things. Which of them was to blame, 
I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M. P., twenty-five years ago, 



134 NOTES. 

well known as River Sharpe, from the a/ttQccvToXoyia cf his con- 
versation, used to say, that one or both of the executors had 
offered him (the river) a huge travelling trunk, perhaps an Im- 
perial or a Salisbury boot (equal to the wardrobe of a family), 
filled with Burke's MSS., on the simple condition of editing them 
with proper annotations. An Oxford man, and also the celebrated 
Mr. Christian Curwen, then member for Cumberland, made, in 
my heai-ing, the same report. The Oxford man, in particular, 
being questioned as to the probable amount of MS., deposed, that 
he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents ; but this 
he could say, that, having stripped up his coat sleeve, he had 
endeavored, by such poor machinery as nature had allowed him, 
to take the soundings of the trunk, but apparently there were 
none ; with his middle finger he could find no bottom ; for it was 
stopped by a dense stratum of MS. ; below which, you know, 
other strata might lie ad infinitum. For anything proved to the 
contrary, the trunk might be bottomless. 

Note 10. Page 120. 

A man in Fox's situation is sure, whilst living, to draw after 
him trains of sycophants ; and it is the evil necessity of news- 
papers the most independent, that they must swell the mob of 
sycophants. The public compels them to exaggerate the true 
proportions of such people as we see every hour in our own day. 
Those who, for the moment, modify, or may modify the national 
condition, become preposterous idols in the eyes of the gaping 
public ; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly trodden 
under foot after they are shelved, unless they live in men's 
memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Hav 
ing the usual fate, Fox was complimented, whilst living, on his 
knowledge of Homeric Greek, which was a jest : he knew neither 
more nor less of Homer, than, fortunately, most English gentle- 
men of his rank ; quite enough that is to read the ' Iliad ' with 
unaffected pleasure, far too little to revise the text of any three 
lines, without making himself ridiculous. The excessive slender- 
ness of his general literature, English and French, may be seen 
in the letters published by his Secretary, Trotter. But his frag- 
ment of a History, published by Lord Holland, at two guineas, 
and currently sold for tAvo shillings (not two pence, or else I 



NOTES. 135 

have been defrauded of Is. lOd.), most of all proclaims the tenuity 
of his knowledge. He looks upon Malcolm Laing as a huge 
oracle ; and, having read eyen less than Hume, a thing not very 
easy, with great naivete, cannot guess where Hume picked up 
his facts. 

Note 11. Page 124. 

Even in Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from 
Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in 
his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several pecu- 
liarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from 
his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked 
them. The same thing may be seen in the notes to Dr. Francis's 
translation of Horace. These points, though not independently 
of much importance, become far more so in combination with 
others. The reply made to me once by a publisher of some emi- 
nence upon this question, was the best fitted to lower Mr. Taylor's 
investigation with a stranger to the long history of the dispute. 
' I feel,' he said, ' the impregnability of the case made out by Mr. 
Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many pre- 
vious impregnable cases made out for other claimants.' Ay, that 
would be unfortunate. But the misfortune for this repartee was, 
that I, for whose use it was intended, not being in the predica- 
ment of a stranger to the dispute, having seen every page of the 
pleadings, knew all (except Mr. Taylor's) to be false ia their 
statements ; after which their arguments signified nothing. 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES, 

AS REPRESENTED ON THE EDINBURGH STAGE. 

Every thing in our days is new. Roads, for in- 
stance, which, being formerly ' of the earth earthy,' 
and therefore perishable, are now iron, and next door 
to being in^.mortal ; tragedies, which are so entirely 
new, that neither we nor our fathers, through eighteen 
hundred and ninety odd years, gone by, since Ccesar 
did our little island the honor to sit upon its skirts, 
have ever seen the like to this ' Antigone ; ' and, finally, 
even more new are readers, who, being once an obe- 
dient race of men, most humble and deferential in the 
presence of a Greek scholar, are now become intrac- 
tably mutinous ; keep their hats on whilst he is ad- 
dressing them ; and listen to him or not, as he seems 
to talk sense or nonsense. Some there are, however, 
who look upon all these new things cis being intensely 
old. Yet, surely the railroads are new ? No ; not at 
all. Talus, the iron man in Spenser, who continually 
ran round the island of Crete, administering gentle 
warning and correction to offenders, by flooring them 
with an iron flail, was a very ancient personage in 
Greek fable ; and the received opinion is, that he must 
have been a Cretan railroad, called The Great Circular 
Coast-Line, that carried my lords the judges on their 
circuits of jail-delivery. The ' Antigone,' again, that 
12 " [137] 



138 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

wears the freshness of morning dew, and is so fresh 
and dewy in the beautiful person of Miss Faucit, had 
really begun to look faded on the Athenian stage, and 
even ' of a certain age,' about the death of Pericles, 
whose meridian year was the year 444 before Christ. 
Lastly, these modern readers^ that are so obstinately 
rebellious to the once Papal authority of Greek, they — 
No ; on consideration, they are new. Antiquity pro- 
duced many monsters, but none like them. 

The truth is, that this vast multiplication of readers, 
within the last twenty-five years, has changed the 
prevailing character of readers. The minority has 
become the overwhelming majority : the quantity has 
disturbed the quality. Formerly, out of every five 
readers, at least four were, in some degree, classical 
scholars : or, if that would be saying too much, if two 
of the four had ' small Latin and less Greek,' they 
were generally connected with those who had more, or 
at the worst, who had much reverence for Latin, and 
more reverence for Greek. If they did not all share 
in the services of the temple, all, at least, shared in 
the superstition. But, now-a-days, the readers come 
chiefly from a class of busy people who care very 
little for ancestral crazes. Latin they have heard of, 
and some of them know it as a good sort of industrious 
language, that even, in modern times, has turned out 
many useful books, astronomical, medical, philosophi- 
cal, and (as Mrs. Malaprop observes) diabolical ; but, 
as to Greek, they think of it as of an ancient mummy : 
you spend an infinity of time in unswathing it from its 
old dusty wrappers, and, when you have come to the 
end, what do you find for your pains } A woman's 
face, or a baby's, that certainly is not the better for 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 139 

being three thousand years old ; and perhaps a few 
ears of wheat, stolen from Pharaoh's granary ; which 
wheat, when sown ' in Norfolk or Mid-Lothian, reaped, 
thrashed, ground, baked, and hunted through all sorts 
of tortures, yields a breakfast roll that (as a Scottish 
baker observed to me) is ' not just that bad.' Cer- 
tainly not : not exactly ' that bad ; ' not worse than the 
worst of our own ; but still, much fitter for Pharaoh's 
breakfast-table than for ours. 

I, for my own part, stand upon an isthmus, con- 
necting me, at one terminus, with the rebels against 
Greek, and, at the other, with those against whom they 
are in rebellion. On the one hand, it seems shocking 
to me, who am steeped to the lips in antique prejudices, 
that Greek, in unlimited quantities, should not secure a 
limited privilege of talking nonsense. Is all reverence 
extinct for old, and ivy-mantled, and worm-eaten 
things ? Surely, if your own grandmother lectures on 
morals, which perhaps now and then she does, she will 
command that reverence from you, by means of her 
grandmotherhood, which by means of her ethics she 
might not. To be a good Grecian, is now to be a 
faded potentate ; a sort of phantom Mogul, sitting at 
Delhi, with an English sepoy bestriding his shoulders. 
Matched against the master of ologies, in our days, 
the most accomplished of Grecians is becoming what 
the ' master of sentences ' had become long since, in 
competition with the political economist. Yet, be 
assured, reader, that all the ' ologies ' hitherto chris- 
tened oology, ichthyology, ornithology, conchology, 
palseodontology, &c., do not furnish such mines of 
labor as does the Greek language when thoroughly 
searched. The ' Mithridates ' of Adelung, improved 



140 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

by the commentaries of Vater and of subsequent au- 
thors, numbers up about four thousand languages and 
jargons on our polyglot earth ; not including the 
chuckling of poultry, nor caterwauling, nor barking, 
howlmg, braying, lowing, nor other respectable and 
ancient dialects, that perhaps have their elegant and 
their vulgar varieties, as well as prouder forms of com- 
munication. But my impression is, that the Greek, 
taken by itself, this one exquisite language, considered 
as a quarry of intellectual labor, has more work in it, 
is more truly a piece de resistance^ than all the re- 
maining three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, 
with caterwauling thrown into the bargain. So far I 
side with the Grecian, and think that he ought to "be 
honored with a little genuflexion. Yet, on the other 
hand, the finest sound on this earth, and which rises 
like an orchestra above all the uproars of earth, and 
the Babels of earthly languages, is truth — absolute 
truth ; and the hatefulest is conscious falsehood. Now, 
there is falsehood, nay (which seems strange), even 
sycophancy, in the old undistinguishing homage to all 
that is called classical. Yet why should men be syco- 
phants in cases where they must be disinterested > 
Sycophancy grows out of fear, or out of mercenary 
self-interest. Bat what can there exist of either point- 
ing to an old Greek poet? Cannot a man give his 
free opinion upon Homer, without fearing to be way- 
laid by his ghost ? But it is not that which startles 
him from .publishing the secret demur which his heart 
prompts, upon hearing false praises of a Greek poet, 
or praises which, if not false, are extravagant. What 
he fears, is the scorn of his contemporaries. Let 
once a party have formed itself considerable enough to 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 141 

protect a man from the charge of presumption in 
throwing off the yoke of servile allegiance to all that 
is called classical, — let it be a party ever so small 
numerically, and the rebels will soon be many. What 
a man fears is, to affront the whole storm of indigna- 
tion, real and affected, in his own solitary person. 
' Goth ! ' * Vandal ! ' he hears from every side. Break 
that storm by dividing it, and he will face its anger. 
' Let me be a Goth,' he mutters to himself, ' but let me 
not dishonor myself by affecting an enthusiasm which 
my heart rejects ! ' 

Ever since the restoration of letters there has been a 
cabal, an academic interest, a factious league amongst 
universities, and learned bodies, and individual scholars, 
for exalting as something superterrestrial, and quite 
unapproachable by moderns, the monuments of Greek 
literature. France, in the time of Louis XIV., Eng- 
land, in the latter part of that time ; in fact, each 
country as it grew polished at some cost of strength, 
carried this craze to a dangerous excess — dangerous 
as all things false are dangerous, and depressing to 
the aspirations of genius. Boileau, for instance, and 
Addison, though neither ^ of them accomplished in 
scholarship, nor either of them extensively read in any 
department of the classic literature, speak every where 
of the classics as having notoriously, and by the 
general confession of polished nations, carried the 
functions of poetry and eloquence to that sort of fault- 
less beauty which probably does really exist in the 
Greek sculpture. There are few things perfect in 
this world of frailty. Even lightning is sometimes a 
failure : Niagara has horrible faults ; and Mont Blanc 
might be improved by a century of chiselling from 



142 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

judicious artists. Such are the works of blind ele- 
ments, which (poor things !) cannot improve by expe- 
rience. As to man who does^ the sculpture of the 
Greeks in their marbles and sometimes in their gems, 
seems the only act of his workmanship which has hit 
the bull's eye in the target at which we are all aiming. 
Not so, with permission from Messrs. Boileau and Ad- 
dison, the Greek literature. The faults in this are 
often conspicuous; nor are they likely to be hidden 
for the coming century, as they have been for the 
three last. The idolatry will be shaken : as idols, 
some of the classic models are destined to totter : and 
I foresee, without gifts of prophecy, that many laborers 
will soon be in this field — many idoloclasts, who will 
expose the signs of disease, which zealots had inter- 
preted as power ; and of weakness, which is not the 
less real because scholars had fancied it health, nor the 
less injurious to the total effect because it was inevita- 
ble under the accidents of the Grecian position. 

Meantime, I repeat, that to disparage any thing 
whatever, or to turn the eye upon blemishes, is no part 
of my present purpose. Nor could it be : since the 
one sole section of the Greek literature, as to which I 
profess myself an enthusiast, happens to be the tragic 
drama ; and here, only, 1 myself am liable to be chal- 
lenged as an idolater. As regards the Antigone in 
particular, so profoundly do I feel the impassioned 
beauty of her situation in connection with her charac- 
ter, that long ago, in a work of my own (yet unpub- 
lished), having occasion (by way of overture intro- 
ducing one of the sections) to cite before the reader's 
eye the chief pomps of the Grecian theatre, after 
invoking ' the magnificent witch ' Medea, I call up 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOrHOCLES. 143 

Antigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe, 
' Holy heathen, daughter of God, before God was 
known, 3 flower from Paradise after Paradise was 
closed ; that quitting all things for which flesh lan- 
guishes, safety and honor, a palace and a home, didst 
make thyself a houseless pariah, lest the poor pariah 
king, thy outcast father, should want a hand to lead 
him in his darkness, or a voice to whisper comfort in 
his misery; angel, that badst depart for ever the 
glories of thy own bridal day, lest he that had shared 
thy nursery in childhood, should want the honors of a 
funeral ; idolatrous, yet Christian Lady, that in the 
spirit of martyrdom trodst alone the yawning billows 
of the grave, flying from earthly hopes, lest everlast- 
ing despair should settle upon the grave of thy brother,' 
&c. In fact, though all the groupings, and what I 
would call permanent atthudes of the Grecian stage, 
are majestic, there is none that, to my mind, towers 
into such affecting grandeur, as this final revelation, 
through Antigone herself, and through her own dread- 
ful death, of the tremendous wo that destiny had sus- 
pended over her house. If therefore my business had 
been chiefly with the individual drama, I should have 
found little room for any sentiment but that of pro- 
found admiration. But my present business is differ- 
ent : it concerns the Greek drama generally, and the 
attempt to revive it ; and its object is to elucidate, 
rather than to praise or to blame. To explain this 
better, I will describe two things: — 1st, The sort 
of audience that I suppose myself to be addressing; 
and, 2dly, As growing out of that^ the particular 
quality of the explanations which I wish to make. 
1st, As to the audience : in order to excuse the tone 



144 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPnOCLES. 

(which occasionally I may be obliged to assume) of 
one speaking as from a station of knowledge, to others 
having no knowledge, I beg it to be understood, that I 
take that station deliberately, on no conceit of supe- 
riority to my readers, but as a companion adapting my 
services to the wants of those who need them. I am 
not addressing those already familiar with the Greek 
drama, but those who frankly confess, and (according 
to their conjectural appreciation of it) who regret their 
non-familiarity with that drama. It is a thing well 
known to publishers, through remarkable results, and 
is now showing itself on a scale continually widening, 
that a new literary public has arisen, very different 
from any which existed at the beginning of this cen- 
tury. The aristocracy of the land have always been, 
in a moderate degree, literary ; less, however, in con- 
nection with the current literature, than with literature 
generally — past as well as present. And this is a 
tendency naturally favored and strengthened in them^ 
by the fine collections of books, carried forward through 
successive generations, which are so often found as a 
sort of hereditary foundation in the country mansions 
of our nobility. But a class of readers, prodigiously 
more ' extensive, has formed itself within the com- 
mercial orders of our great cities and manufacturing 
districts. These orders range through a large scale. 
The highest classes amongst them were always literary. 
But the interest of literature has now swept downwards 
through a vast compass of descents: and this large 
body, though the busiest in the nation, yet, by having 
under their undisturbed command such leisure time as 
they have at all under their command, are eventually 
able to read more than those even who seem to have 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 145 

nothing else but leisure. In justice, however, to the 
nobility of our land, it should be remembered, that 
their stations in society, and their wealth, their terri- 
torial duties, and their various public duties in London, 
as at court, at public meetings, in parliament, &c., 
bring crowded claims upon their time ; whilst even 
sacrifices of time to the graceful courtesies of life, are in 
reference to their stations, a sort of secondary duties. 
These allowances made, it still remains true that the 
busier classes are the main reading classes; whilst 
from their immense numbers, they are becoming ef- 
fectually the body that will more and more impress 
upon the moving literature its main impulse and di- 
rection. One other feature of difference there is 
amongst this commercial class of readers : amongst 
the aristocracy all are thoroughly educated, excepting 
those who go at an early age into the army ; of the 
commercial body, none receive an elaborate, and what 
is meant by a liberal education, except those standing 
by their connections in the richest classes. Thus it 
happens that, amongst those who have not inherited 
but achieved their stations, many men of fine and 
powerful understandings, accomplished in manners, 
and admirably informed, not having had the bene- 
fits when young of a regular classical education, find 
(upon any accident bringing up such subjects) a de- 
ficiency which they do not find on other subjects. 
They are too honorable to undervalue advantages, 
which they feel to be considerable, simply because 
they were denied to themselves. They regret their 
loss. And yet it seems hardly worth while, on a 
simple prospect of contingencies that may never be 
realized, to undertake an entirely new course of study 
13 



146 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

for redressing this loss. But they would be glad to 
avail themselves of any useful information not exact- 
ing study. These are the persons, this is the class, to 
which I address my remarks on the ' Antigone ; ' and 
out of their particular situation, suggesting upon all 
elevated subjects a corresponding tone of liberal curi- 
osity, will arise the particular nature and direction of 
these remarks. 

Accordingly, I presume, secondly, that this curiosity 
will take the following course : — these persons will 
naturally wish to know, at starting, what there is 
differentially interesting in a Grecian tragedy, as con- 
trasted with one of Shakspeare's or of Schiller's : in 
what respect, and by what agencies, a Greek tragedy 
affects us, or is meant to aifect us, otherwise than as 
they do ; and how far the Antigone of Sophocles was 
judiciously chosen as the particular medium for con- 
veying to British minds a first impression, and a repre- 
sentative impression, of Greek tragedy. So far, in 
relation to the ends proposed, and the means selected. 
Finally, these persons will be curious to know the issue 
of such an experiment. Let the purposes and the 
means have been bad or good, what was the actual 
success ? And not merely success, in the sense of 
the momentary acceptance by half a dozen audiences, 
whom the mere decencies of justice must have com- 
pe-lled to acknowledge the manager's trouble and 
expense on their behalf; but what was the degree of 
satisfaction felt by students of the Athenian 4 tragedy, 
in relation to their long-cherished ideal } Did the re- 
presentation succeed in realizing, for a moment, the 
awful pageant of the Athenian stage ? Did Tragedy, 
in Milton's immortal expression, 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 147 

come sweeping by 

In sceptred pall ? 

Or was the whole, though successful in relation to the 
thing attempted, a failure in relation to what ought 
to have been attempted ? Such are the questions to 
be answered. 

The first elementary idea of a Greek tragedy, is 
to be sought in a serious Italian opera. The Greek 
dialogue is represented by the recitative, and the 
tumultuous lyrical parts assigned chiefly, though not 
exclusively, to the chorus on the Greek stage, are 
represented by the impassioned airs, duos, trios, cho- 
ruses, &c. on the Italian. And here, at the very outset, 
occurs a question which lies at the threshold of a Fine 
Art, — that is, of any Fine Art: for had the views of 
Addison upon the Italian opera had the least foundation 
in truth, there could have been no room or opening 
for any mode of imitation except such as belongs to a 
mechanic art. 

The reason for at all connecting Addison with this 
case is, that he chiefly was the person occupied in 
assailing the Italian opera ; and this hostility arose, 
probably, in his want of sensibility to good (that is, to 
Italian) music. But whatever might be his motive for 
the hostility, the single argument by which he sup- 
ported it was this, — that a hero ought not to sing 
upon the stage, because no hero known to history ever 
summoned a garrison in a song, or charged a battery 
in a semichorus. In this argument lies an ignorance 
of the very first principle concerned in every Fine 
Art. In all alike, more or less directly, the object is 
to reproduce in the mind some great eflect, through 



148 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

the agency of idem in alio. The idem^ the same im- 
pression, is to be restored ; but in alio., in a different 
material, — by means of some different instrument. 
For instance, on the Roman stage there was an art, 
now entirely lost, of narrating, and, in part of dramati- 
cally representing an impassioned tale, by means of 
dancing, of musical accompaniment in the orchestra, 
and of elaborate pantomime in the performer. Saltavit 
Hypermnestram, he danced (that is, he represented by 
dancing and pantomime the story of) Hypermnestra. 
Now, suppose a man to object, that young ladies, 
when saving their youthful husbands at midnight from 
assassination, could not be capable of waltzing or 
quadrilling, how wide is this of the whole problem ! 
This is still seeking for the mechanic imitation, some 
imitation founded in the very fact ; whereas the object 
is to seek the imitation in the sameness of the im- 
pression drawn from a different, or even from an 
impossible fact. If a man, taking a hint from the 
Roman ' Saltatio' {saltavit Andromachen), should say 
that he would ' whistle Waterloo,' that is, by whistling 
connected with pantomime, would express the passion 
and the changes of Waterloo, it would be monstrous to 
refuse him his postulate on the pretence that ' people 
did not whistle at Waterloo.' Precisely so : neither 
are most people made of marble, but of a material as 
different as can well be imagined, viz. of elastic flesh, 
with warm blood coursing along its tubes ; and yet, 
for all that, a sculptor will draw tears from you, by 
exhibiting, in pure statuary marble, on a sepulchral 
monument, two young children with their little heads 
on a pillow, sleeping in each other's arms ; whereas, 
if he had presented them in wax-work, which yet is 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 149 

far more like to flesh, you would have felt little more 
pathos in the scene than if they had been shown baked 
in gilt gingerbread. He has expressed the idem^ the 
identical thing expressed in the real children; the 
sleep that masks death, the rest, the peace, the 
purity, the innocence ; but in alio^ in a substance 
the most different ; rigid, non-elastic, and as unlike to 
flesh, if tried by touch, or eye, or by experience of 
life, as can well be imagined. So of the whistling. It 
is the very worst objection in the world to say, that 
the strife of Waterloo did not reveal itself through 
whistling : undoubtedly it did not ; but that is the very 
ground of the man's art. He will reproduce the fury 
and the movement as to the only point which concerns 
you, viz. the effect, upon your own sympathies, through 
a language that seems without any relation to it : he 
will set before you what was at Waterloo through that 
which was not at Waterloo. Whereas any direct 
factual imitation, resting upon painted figures drest up 
in regimentals, and worked by watchwork through the 
whole movements of the battle, would have been no 
art whatsoever in the sense of a Fine Art, but a base 
mechanic mimicry. 

This principle of the idem in alio, so widely diffused 
through all the higher revelations of art, it is peculiarly 
requisite to bear in mind when looking at Grecian 
tragedy, because no form of human composition em- 
ploys it in so much complexity. How confounding it 
would have been to Addison, if somebody had told 
him, that, substantially, he had himself committed the 
offence (as he fancied it) which he charged so bitterly 
upon the Italian opera ; and that, if the opera had gone 
farther upon that road than himself, the Greek tragedy, 



150 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

which he presumed to be so prodigiously exalted be- 
yond modern approaches, had gone farther even than 
the opera. Addison himself, when writing a tragedy, 
made this violation (as he would have said) of nature, 
made this concession (as I should say) to a higher 
nature, that he compelled his characters to talk in 
metre. It is true this metre was the common iambic, 
which (as Aristotle remarks) is the most natural and 
spontaneous of all metres ; and, for a sufficient reason, 
in all languages. Certainly ; but Aristotle never 
meant to say that it was natural for a gentleman in a 
passion to talk threescore and ten iambics consecu- 
tively : a chance line might escape him once and 
away; as we know that Tacitus opened one of his 
works by a regular dactylic hexameter in full curl, 
without ever discovering it to his dying day (a fact 
which is clear from his never having corrected it) ; 
and this being a very artificial metre, a fortiori Tacitus 
might have slipped into a simple iambic. But that 
was an accident, whilst Addison had deliberately and 
uniformly made his characters talk in verse. Accord- 
ing to the common and false meaning [which was his 
own meaning] of the word nature, he had as undeniably 
violated the principle of the natural, by this metrical 
dialogue, as the Italian opera by musical dialogue. If 
it is hard and trying for men to sing their emotions, 
not less so it must be to deliver them in verse. 

But, if this were shocking, how much more shocking 
would it have seemed to Addison, had he been intro- 
duced to parts which really exist in the Grecian drama ? 
Even Sophocles, who, of the three tragic poets sur- 
viving from the wrecks of the Athenian stage, is 
reputed the supreme artist,^ if not the most impas- 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 151 

sioned poet, with what horror he would have over- 
whch-ned Addison, when read by the light of those 
principles which he had himself so scornfully applied 
to the opera! In the very monsoon of his raving 
misery, from calamities as sudden as they were irre- 
deemable, a king is introduced, not only conversing, 
but conversing in metre ; not only in metre, but in the 
most elaborate of choral metres ; not only under the 
torture of these lyric difficulties, but also chanting; 
not only chanting, but also in all probability dancing. 
What do you think of tliat^ Mr. Addison ? 

There is, in fact, a scale of graduated ascents in 
these artifices for unrealizing the effects of dramatic 
situations : 

1. We may see, even in novels and prose comedies, 
a keen attention paid to the inspiriting and dressing of 
the dialogue : it is meant to be life-like, but still it is a 
little raised, pointed, colored, and idealized. 

2. In comedy of a higher and more poetic cast, we 
find the dialogue metrical. 

3. In comedy or in tragedy alike, which is meant to 
be still further removed from ordinary life, we find the 
dialogue fettered not only by metre, but by rhyme. 
We need not go to Dryden, and others, of our own 
middle stage, or to the French stage for this : even in 
Shakspeare, as for example, in parts of Romeo and 
Juliet (and for no capricious purpose), we may see 
effects sought from the use of rhyme. There is another 
illustration of the idealizing effect to be obtained from 
a particular treatment of the dialogue, seen in the 
Hamlet of Shakspeare. In that drama there arises a 
necessity for exhibiting a play within a play. This 
interior drama is to be further removed from the 



152 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

spectator than the principal drama ; it is a deep below 
a deep ; and, to produce that effect, the poet relies 
chiefly upon the stiffening the dialogue, and removing 
it still farther, than the general dialogue of the in- 
cluding or outside drama, from the standard of ordi- 
nary life. 

4. We find, superadded to these artifices for ideal- 
izing the situations, even music of an intermitting 
character, sometimes less, sometimes more impas- 
sioned — recitatives, airs, choruses. Here we have 
reached the Italian opera. 

5, And, finally, besides all these resources of art, 
we find dancing introduced ; but dancing of a solemn, 
mystical, and symbolic character. Here, at last, we 
have reached the Greek tragedy. Probably the best 
exemplification of a Grecian tragedy that ever will be 
given to a modern reader is found in the Samson 
Agonistes of Milton. Now, in the choral or lyric parts 
of this fine drama, Samson not only talks, 1st, metri- 
cally (as he does every where, and in the most level 
parts of the scenic business), but, 2d, in very intricate 
metres, and, Sd, occasionally in rhymed metres (though 
the rhymes are too sparingly and too capriciously scat- 
tered by Milton), and, 4th, singing or chanting these 
metres (for, as the chorus sang, it was impossible that 
he could be allowed to talk in his ordinary voice, else 
he would have put them out, and ruined the music). 
Finally, 5th, I am satisfied that Milton meant him to 
dance. The office of the chorus was imperfectly de- 
fined upon the Greek stage. They are generally 
understood to be the woralizers of the scene. But this 
is liable to exceptions. Some of them have been 
known to do very bad things on the stage, and to come 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 153 

within a trifle of felony : as to misprision of felony, 
if there is such a crime, a Greek chorus thinks nothing 
of it. But that is no business of mine. What I was 
going to say is, that, as the chorus sometimes inter- 
mingles too much in the action, so the actors some- 
times intermingle in the business of the chorus. Now, 
when you are at Rome, you must do as they do at 
Rome. And that the actor, who mixed with the 
chorus, was compelled to sing, is a clear case ; for Ids 
part in the choral ode is always in the nature of an 
echo, or answer, or like an aiitiphony in cathedral ser- 
vices. But nothing could be more absurd than that 
one of these antiphonies should be sung, and another 
said. That he was also compelled to dance, I am 
satisfied. The chorus only sometimes moralized, but it 
always danced : and any actor, mingling with the 
chorus, must dance also. A little incident occurs to 
my remembrance, from the Moscow expedition of 1812, 
which may here be used as an illustration : One day 
King Murat, flourishing his plumage as usual, made a 
gesture of invitation to some squadrons of cavalry that 
they should charge the enemy : upon which the cavalry 
advanced, but maliciously contrived to envelope the 
king of dandies, before he had time to execute his 
ordinary manoeuvre of riding off to the left and be- 
coming a spectator of their prowess. The cavalry 
resolved that his majesty should for once ride down at 
their head to the melee, and taste what fighting was 
like ; and he, finding that the thing must be, though 
horribly vexed, made a merit of his necessity, and 
afterwards pretended that he liked it very much. 
Sometimes, in the darkness, in default of other mis- 
anthropic visions, the wickedness of this cavalry, their 



154 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

mechancete, causes me to laugh immoderately. Now 
I conceive that anj^ interloper into the Greek chorus 
must have danced when they danced, or he would have 
been swept away by their impetus : nolens volens^ he 
must have rode along with the orchestral charge, he 
must have rode on the crest of the choral billows, or 
he would have been rode down by their impassioned 
sweep. Samson, and (Edipus, and others, must have 
danced, if they sang ; and they certainly did sing, by 
notoriously intermingling in the choral business.^ 

' But now,' says the plain English reader, ' what was 
the object of all these elaborate devices ? And how 
came it that the English tragedy, which surely is as 
good as the Greek,' (and at this point a devil of de- 
fiance whispers to him, like the quarrelsome servant 
of the Capulets or the Montagus, 'say better,'') 'that 
the English tragedy contented itself with fewer of these 
artful resources than the Athenian ? ' I reply, that 
the object of all these things was — to unrealize the 
scene. The English drama, by its metrical dress, and 
by other arts more disguised, unrealized itself, liberated 
itself from the oppression of life in its ordinary stand- 
ards, up to a certain height. Why it did not rise still 
higher, and why the Grecian did, T will endeavor to 
explain. It was not that the English tragedy was less 
impassioned ; on the contrary, it was far more so ; the 
Greek being awful rather than impassioned ; but the 
passion of each is in a different key. It is not again 
that the Greek drama sought a lower object than the 
English : it sought a different object. It is not im- 
parity, but disparity, that divides the two magnificent 
theatres. 

Suffer me, reader, at this point, to borrow from my- 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 155 

self, and do not betray me to the authorities that rule in 
this journal, if you happen to know [which is not 
likely] that I am taking an idea from a paper which 
years ago I wrote for an eminent literary journal. As 
I have no copy of that paper before me, it is impos- 
sible that I should save myself any labor of writing. 
The words at any rate I must invent afresh : and, as 
to the idea, you never can be such a churlish man as, 
by insisting on a new one, in effect to insist upon my 
writing a false one. In the following paragraph, there- 
fore, I give the substance of a thought suggested by 
myself some years ago. 

That kind of feeling, which broods over the Grecian 
tragedy, and to court which feeling the tragic poets 
of Greece naturally spread all their canvas, was more 
nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than that of 
life. This expresses rudely the character of awe and 
religious horror investing the Greek theatre. But to 
my own feeling the different principle of passion which 
governs the Grecian conception of tragedy, as com- 
pared with the English, is best conveyed by saying 
that the Grecian is a breathing from the world of 
sculpture, the English a breathing from the world 
of painting. What we read in sculpture is not abso- 
lutely death, but still less is it the fulness of life. We 
read there the abstraction of a life that reposes, the 
sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of a life 
that is thrown to an infinite distance. This last is the 
feature of sculpture which seems most characteristic : 
the form which presides in the most commanding 
groups, ' is not dead but sleepeth : ' true, but it is the 
sleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, liberated from the 
bonds of space and time, and (as to both alike) thrown 



156 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

(I repeat the words) to a distance which is infinite. It 
affects us profoundly, but not by agitation. Now, on 
the other hand, the breathing life — life kindling, 
trembling, palpitating — that life which speaks to us 
in painting, this is also the life that speaks to us in 
English tragedy. Into an English tragedy even fes- 
tivals of joy may enter ; marriages, and baptisms, or 
commemorations of national trophies : which, or any 
thing like which, is incompatible with the very being 
of the Greek. In that tragedy what uniformity of 
gloom ; in the English what light alternating with 
depths of darkness ! The Greek, how mournful ; the 
English, how tumultuous ! Even the catastrophes how 
different ! In the Greek we see a breathless waiting 
for a doom that cannot be evaded ; a waiting, as it 
were, for the last shock of an earthquake, or the inex- 
orable rising of a deluge : in the English it is like a 
midnight of shipwreck, from which up to the Ictst and 
till the final ruin comes, there still survives the sort of 
hope that clings to human energies. 

Connected with this original awfulness of the Greek 
tragedy, and possibly in part its cause, or at least 
lending strength to its cause, we may next remark the 
grand dimensions of the ancient theatres. Every 
citizen had a right to accommodation. There at once 
was a pledge of grandeur. Out of this original stand- 
ard grew the magnificence of many a future amphi- 
theatre, circus, hippodrome. Had the original theatre 
been merely a speculation of private interest, then, 
exactly as demand arose, a corresponding supply would 
have provided for it through its ordinary vulgar chan- 
nels ; and this supply would have taken place through 
rival theatres. But the crushing exaction of ' room for 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 157 

every citizen,' put an end to that process of subdivision. 
Druiy Lane, as 1 read (or think that I read) thirty 
years ago, allowed sitting room for three thousand 
eight hundred people. Multiply that by ten ; imagine 
thirty-eight thousand instead of thirty-eight hundred, 
and then you have an idea of the Athenian theatre.''' 

Next, out of that grandeur in the architectural pro- 
portions arose, as by necessity, other grandeurs. You 
are aware of the cothurnus^ or buskin, which raised 
the actor's heel by two and a half inches ; and you 
think that this must have caused a deformity in the 
general figure as incommensurate to this height. Not 
at all. The flowing dress of Greece healed all that. 

But, besides the cothurnus^ you have heard of the 
mask. So far as it was fitted to swell the intona- 
tions of the voice, you are of opinion that this mask 
would be a happy contrivance ; for what, you say, 
could a common human voice avail against the vast 
radiation from the actor's centre of more than three 
myriads? If, indeed (like the Homeric Stentor), an 
actor spoke in point of loudness, 6oov hXXoi nsvTyjxovra, as 
much as other fifty, then he might become audible to 
the assembled Athenians without aid. But this being 
impossible, art must be invoked ; and well if the 
mask, together with contrivances of another class, 
could correct it. Yet if it could, still you think that 
this mask would bring along with it an overbalancing 
evil. For the expression, the fluctuating expression, 
of the features, the play of the muscles, the music of 
the eye and of the lips, — aids to acting that, in our 
times, have given immortality to scores, whither would 
those have vanished? Reader, it mortifies me that 
all which I said to you upon the peculiar and separate 



158 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

grandeur investing the Greek theatre is forgotten. 
For, you must consider, that where a theatre is built 
for receiving upwards of thirty thousand spectators, the 
curve described by what in modern times you would 
call the tiers of boxes, must be so vast as to make the 
ordinary scale of human features almost ridiculous by 
disproportion. Seat yourself at this day in the amphi- 
theatre at Verona, and judge for yourself. In an 
amphitheatre, the stage, or properly the arena, occupy- 
ing, in fact, the place of our modern pit, was much 
nearer than in a scenic theatre to the surrounding 
spectators. Allow for this, and placing some adult in 
a station expressing the distance of the Athenian stage, 
then judge by his appearance if the delicate pencilling 
of Grecian features could have told at the Grecian dis- 
tance. But even if it could, then I say that this cir- 
cumstantiality would have been hostile to the general 
tendencies (as already indicated) of the Grecian 
drama. The sweeping movement of the Attic tragedy 
ought not to admit of interruption from distinct human 
features ; the expression of an eye, the loveliness of a 
smile, ought to be lost amongst effects so colossal. 
The mask aggrandized the features : even so far it 
acted favorably. Then figure to yourself this mask 
presenting an idealized face of the noblest Grecian 
outline, moulded by some skilful artist Fhidiacd manu^ 
so as to have the effect of a marble bust ; this accorded 
with the aspiring cothurnus ; and the motionless char- 
acter impressed upon the features, the marble tran- 
quillity, would (I contend) suit the solemn processional 
character of Athenian tragedy, far better than the most 
expressive and flexible countenance on its natural 
scale. ' Yes,' you say, on considering the character 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 159 

of the Greek drama, 'generally it might; in forty- 
nine cases suppose out of fifty : but what shall be done 
in the fiftieth, where some dreadful discovery or a7iag- 
norisis [i. e. recognition of identity) takes place within 
the compass of a single line or two ; as, for instance, 
in the (Edipus Tyrannus, at the moment when CEdipus 
by a final question of his own, extorts his first fatal 
discovery, viz. that he had been himself unconsciously 
the murderer of Laius ? ' True, he has no reason as 
yet to suspect that Laius was his own father ; which 
discovery, when made further on, will di'aw with it 
another still more dreadful, viz. that by this parricide 
he had opened his road to a throne, and to a marriage 
with his father's widow, who was also his own natural 
mother. He does not yet know the worst : and to 
have killed an arrogant prince, would not in those days 
have seemed a very deep offence : but then he believes 
that the pestilence had been sent as a secret vengeance 
for this assassination, which is thus invested with a 
mysterious character of horror. Just at this point, 
Jocasta, his mother and his wife, says,^ on witnessing 
the sudden revulsion of feeling in his face, ' I shudder, 
oh king, when looking on thy countenance.' Now, in 
what way could this passing spasm of horror be recon- 
ciled with the unchanging expression in the marble - 
looking mask ? This, and similar cases to this, 
must surely be felt to argue a defect in the scenic 
apparatus. But I say, no : first. Because the general 
indistinctiveness from distance is a benefit that applies 
equally to the fugitive changes of the features and to 
their permanent expression. You need not regret the 
loss through absence, of an appearance that would 
equally, though present, have been lost through dis- 



160 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

tance. Secondly, The Greek actor had always the 
resource, under such difficulties, of averting his face ; 
a resource sanctioned in similar cases by the greatest 
of the Greek painters. Thirdly, The voluminous 
draperies of the scenic dresses, and generally of the 
Greek costume, made it an easy thing to muffle the 
features altogether by a gesture most natural to sudden 
horror. Fourthly, We must consider that there were 
no stage lights : but, on the contrary that the general 
light of day was specially mitigated for that particular 
part of the theatre ; just as various architectural devices 
were employed to swell the volume of sound. Finally, 
I repeat my sincere opinion, that the general indis- 
tinctness of the expression was, on principles of taste, 
an advantage, as harmonizing with the stately and 
sullen monotony of the Greek tragedy. Grandeur in 
the attitudes, in the gestures, in the groups, in the pro- 
cessions — all this was indispensable : but, on so vast 
a scale as the mighty cartoons of the Greek stage, an 
Attic artist as little regarded the details of physiognomy, 
as a great architect would regard, on the frontispiece 
of a temple, the miniature enrichments that might be 
suitable in a drawing-room. 

With these views upon the Grecian theatre, and 
other views that it might oppress the reader to dwell 
upon in this place, suddenly in December last an op- 
portunity dawned — a golden opportunity, gleaming 
for a moment amongst thick clouds of impossibility 
that had gathered through three-and-twenty centuries — 
for seeing a Grecian tragedy presented on a British 
stage, and with the nearest approach possible to the 
beauty of those Athenian pomps which Sophocles, 
which Phidias, which Pericles created, beautified, pro- 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 161 

moted. I protest, when seeing the Edinburgh theatre's 
programme, that a note dated from the Vatican would 
not have startled me more, though sealed with the seal 
of the fisherman, and requesting the favor of my com- 
pany to take coffee with the Pope. Nay, less: for 
channels there were through which I might have com- 
passed a presentation to his Holiness ; but the daughter 
of (Edipus, the holy Antigone, could I have hoped to 
see her ' in the flesh ? ' This tragedy in an English 
version, 9 and v/ith German music, had first been 
placed before the eyes and ears of our countrymen at 
Convent Garden during the winter of 1844-5. It was 
said to have succeeded. And soon after a report 
sprang up, from nobody knew where, that Mr. Murray 
meant to reproduce it in Edinburgh. 

What more natural ? Connected so nearly with the 
noblest house of scenic artists that ever shook the 
hearts of nations, nobler than ever raised undying 
echoes amidst the mighty walls of Athens, of Rome, 
of Paris, of London, — himself a man of talents almost 
unparalleled for versatility, — why should not Mr. 
Murray, always so liberal in an age so ungrateful to 
his profession, have sacrificed something to this occa- 
sion ? He, that sacrifices so much, why not sacrifice 
to the grandeur of the Antique ? I was then in Edin- 
burgh, or in its neighborhood ; and one morning, at a 
casual assembly of some literary friends, present Pro- 
fessor Wilson, Messrs. J. F., C. N., L. C, and others, 
advocates, scholars, lovers of classical literature, we 
proposed two resolutions, of which the first was, that 
the news was too good to be true. That passed nem. 
con.; and the second resolution was iiearly passing, 
viz. that a judgment would certainly fall upon Mr. 
14 



162 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

Murray, had a second report proved true, viz. that not 
the Antigone, but a burlesque on the Antigone, was 
what he meditated to introduce. This turned out 
false ; ^^ the original report was suddenly revived eight 
or ten months after. Immediately on the heels of the 
promise the execution followed ; and on the last (which 
I believe was the seventh) representation of the An- 
tigone, I prepared myself to attend. 

It had been generally reported as characteristic of 
myself, that in respect to all coaches, steamboats, rail- 
roads, wedding-parties, baptisms, and so forth, there 
was a fatal necessity of my being a trifle too late. 
Some malicious fairy, not invited to my own baptism, 
was supposed to have endowed me with this infirmity. 
It occurred to me that for once in my life I would show 
the scandalousness of such a belief by being a trifle 
too soon, say, three minutes. And no name more 
lovely for inaugurating such a change, no memory 
with which I could more willingly connect any re- 
formation, than thine, dear, noble Antigone ! Accord- 
ingly, because a certain man (whose name is down in 
my pocket-book for no good) had told me that the 
doors of the theatre opened at half-past six, whereas, 
in fact, they opened at seven, there was I, if you 
please, freezing in the little colonnade of the theatre 
precisely as it wanted six-and-a-half minutes to seven, — 
six-and-a-half minutes observe too soon. Upon which 
this son of absurdity coolly remarked, that, if he had 
not set me half-an-hour forward, by my own showing, 
I should have been twenty-three-and-a-half minutes too 
late. What sophistry ! But thus it happened (namely, 
through the wickedness of this man), that, upon enter- 
ing the theatre, I found myself like Alexander Selkirk, 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 163 

in a frightful solitude, or like a single family of Arabs 
gathering at sunset about a solitary cofFee-pot in the 
boundless desert. Was there an echo raised ? it was 
from my own steps. Did any body cough? it was 
too evidently myself. 1 was the audience ; I was the 
public. And, if any accident happened to the theatre, 
such as being burned down, Mr. Murray would cer- 
tainly lay the blame upon me. My business meantime, 
as a critic, was — to find out the most malicious seat, 
i. e. the seat from which all things would take the most 
unfavorable aspect. I could not suit myself in this 
respect; however bad a situation might seem, I still 
fancied some other as promising to be worse. And I 
was not sorry when an audience, by mustering in 
strength through all parts of the house, began to divide 
my responsibility as to burning down the building, and, 
at the same time, to limit the caprices of my distracted 
choice. At last, and precisely at half-past seven, the 
curtain drew up ; a thing not strictly correct on a 
Grecian stage. But in theatres, as in other places, 
one must forget and forgive. Then the music began, 
of which in a moment. The overture slipped out at 
one ear, as it entered the other, which, with submission 
to Mr. Mendelssohn, is a proof that it must be horribly 
bad ; for, if ever there lived a man that in music can 
neither forget nor forgive, that man is myself. What- 
ever is very good never perishes from my remem- 
brance, — that is, sounds in my ears by intervals for 
ever, — and for whatever is bad, I consign the author, 
in my wrath, to his own consience, and to the tortures 
of his own discords. The most villanous things, how- 
ever, have one merit ; they are transitory as the best 
things; and that was true of the overture : it perished. 



164 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

Then, suddenly, — oh, heavens ! what a revelation of 
beauty! — forth stepped, walking in brightness, the 
most faultless of Grecian marbles, Miss Helen Faucit 
as Antigone. What perfection of Athenian sculpture ! 
the noble figure, the lovely arms, the fluent drapery ! 
What an unveiling of the ideal statuesque ! Is it Hebe ? 
is it Aurora ? is it a goddess that moves before us ? 
Perfect she is in form ; perfect in attitude ; 

* Beautiful exceedingly, 
Like a ladie from a far countrie.' 

Here was the redeeming jewel of the performance. It 
flattered one's patriotic feelings, to see this noble young 
countrywoman realizing so exquisitely, and restoring 
to our imaginations, the noblest of Grecian girls. We 
critics, dispersed through the house, in the very teeth 
of duty and conscience, all at one moment unanimously 
fell in love with Miss Faucit. We felt in our remorse, 
and did not pretend to deny, that our duty was — to be 
savage. But when was the voice of duty listened to 
in the first uproars of passion ? One thing I regretted, 
viz. that from the indistinctness of my sight for distant 
faces, I could not accurately discriminate Miss Faucit's 
features ; but I was told by my next neighbor that they 
were as true to. the antique as her figure. Miss Faucit's 
voice is fine and impassioned, being deep for a female 
voice ; but in this organ lay also the only blemish of 
her personation. In her last scene, which is injudi- 
ciously managed by the Greek poet, — too long by 
much, and perhaps misconceived in the modern way 
of understanding it, — her voice grew too husky to 
execute the cadences of the intonations : yet, even in 
this scene, her fall to the ground, under the burden of 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 165 

her farewell anguish, was in a high degree sculptur- 
esque through the whole succession of its stages. 

Antigone in the written drama, and still more in the 
personated drama, draws all thoughts so entirely to 
herself, as to leave little leisure for examining the 
other parts ; and, under such circumstances, the first 
impulse of a critic's mind is, that he ought to massacre 
all the rest indiscriminately ; it being clearly his duty 
to presume every thing bad which he is not unwillingly 
forced to confess good, or concerning which he retains 
no distinct recollection. But I, after the first glory of 
Antigone's avatar had subsided, applied myself to con- 
sider the general ' setting ' of this Theban jewel. 
Creon, whom the Greek tragic poets take delight in 
describing as a villain, has very little more to do (until 
his own turn comes for grieving), than to tell Antigone, 
by minute-guns, that die she must. ' Well, uncle, 
don't say that so often,' is the answer which, secretly, 
the audience whispers to Antigone. Our uncle grows 
tedious ; and one wishes at last that he himself could 
be ' put up the spout.' Mr. Glover, from the sepulchral 
depth of his voice, gave effect to the odious Creontic 
menaces ; and, in the final lamentations over the dead 
body of Hsemon, being a man of considerable intel- 
lectual power, Mr. Glover drew the part into a promi 
nence which it is the fault of Sophocles to have 
authorized in that situation ; for the closing sympathies 
of the spectator ought not to be diverted, for a moment, 
from Antigone. 

But the chorus, how did tliey play their part ? Mainly 
tlieir part must have always depended on the character 
of the music : even at Athens, that must have been 
very much the case, and at Edinburgh altogether, be- 



166 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

cause dancing on the Edinburgh stage there was none. 
How came that about ? For the very word, ' orchestral,' 
suggests to a Greek ear dancings as the leading ele- 
ment in the choral functions. Was it because dancing 
with us is never used mystically and symbolically, 
never used in our religious services? Still it would 
have been possible to invent solemn and intricate 
dances, that might have appeared abundantly signifi- 
cant, if expounded by impassioned music. But that 
music of Mendelssohn! — like it I cannot. Say not 
that Mendelssohn is a great composer. He is so. But 
here he was voluntarily abandoning the resources of 
his own genius, and the support of his divine art, in 
quest of a chimera : that is, in quest of a thing called 
Greek music, which for us seems far more irrecover- 
able than the ' Greek fire.' I myself, from an early 
date, was a student of this subject. I read book after 
book upon it ; and each successive book sank me 
lower into darkness, until I had so vastly improved in 
ignorance, that I could myself have written a quarto 
upon it, which all the world should not have found it 
possible to understand. It should have taken three 
men to construe one sentence. I confess, however, to 
not having yet seen the writings upon this impractica- 
ble theme of Colonel Perronet Thompson. To write 
experimental music for choruses that are to support the 
else meagre outline of a Greek tragedy, will not do. 
Let experiments be tried upon worthless subjects ; and 
if this of Mendelssohn's be Greek music, the sooner it 
takes itself off the better. Sophocles will be delivered 
from an incubus, and we from an affliction of the audi- 
tory nerves. 

It strikes me that i see the source of this music. 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 167 

We, that were learning German some thirty years ago, 
must remember the noise made at that time about 
Mendelssohn, the Platonic philosopher. And why ? 
Was there any thing particular in ' Der Phsedon,' on 
the immortality of the soul ? Not at all ; it left us 
quite as mortal as it found us ; and it has long since 
been found mortal itself. Its venerable remains are 
still to be met with in many worm-eaten trunks, pasted 
on the lids of which 1 have myself perused a matter 
of thirty pages, except for a part that had been too 
closely perused by worms. But the key to all the 
popularity of the Platonic Mendelssohn, is to be sought 
in the whimsical nature of German liberality, which, 
in those days, forced Jews into paying toll at the gates 
of cities, under the title of ' swine,' but caressed their 
infidel philosophers. Now, in this category of Jew 
and infidel, stood the author of ' Phsedon.' He was 
certainly liable to toll as a hog ; but, on the other 
hand, he was much admired as one who despised the 
Pentateuch. Now that Mendelssohn, whose learned 
labors lined our trunks, was the father of this Men- 
delssohn, whose Greek music afflicts our ears. Nat- 
urally, then, it strikes me, that as ' papa ' Mendelssohn 
attended the synagogue to save appearances, the filial 
Mendelssohn would also attend it. I likewise attended 
the synagogue now and then at Liverpool, and else- 
where. We all three have been cruising in the same 
latitudes ; and, trusting to my own remembrances, I 
should pronounce that Mendelssohn has stolen his 
Greek music from the synagogue. There was, in the 
first chorus of the ' Antigone,' one sublime ascent (and 
once repeated) that rang to heaven: it might have 
entered into the music of Jubal's lyre, or have glorified 



168 THE ANTIGOJNE OF SOPHOCLES. 

the timbrel of Miriam. All the rest, tried by the deep 
standard of my own feeling, that clamors for the im- 
passioned in music, even as the daughter of the horse- 
leech says, ' Give, give,' is as much without meaning as 
most of the Hebrew chanting that I heard at the Liver- 
pool synagogue. I advise Mr. Murray, in the event 
of his ever reviving the ' Antigone,' to make the chorus 
sing the Hundredth Psalm, rather than Mendelssohn's 
music ; or, which would be better still, to import from 
Lancashire the Handel chorus-singers. 

But then, again, whatever change in the music were 
made, so as to ' better the condition ' of the poor audi- 
ence, something should really be done to ' better the 
condition ' of the poor chorus. Think of these worthy 
men, in their white and skyblue liveries, kept standing 
the whole evening ; no seats allowed, no dancing ; no 
tobacco ; nothing to console them but Antigone's beauty ; 
and all this in our climate, latitude fifty-five degrees, 
30th of December, and Fahrenheit groping about, I 
don't pretend to know where, but clearly on his road 
down to the wine cellar. Mr. Murray, I am perfectly 
sure, is too liberal to have grudged the expense, if he 
could have found any classic precedent for treating the 
chorus to a barrel of ale. Ale, he may object, is an 
unclassical tipple ; but perhaps not. Xenophon, the 
most Attic of prose writers, mentions pointedly in his 
Anabasis, that the Ten Thousand, when retreating 
through snowy mountains, and in circumstances very 
like our General Elphinstone's retreat from Cabul, 
came upon a considerable stock of bottled ale. To be 
sure, the poor ignorant man calls it barley wine, 
[uirog xQiQivog :] but the flavor was found so perfectly 
classical that not one man of the ten thousand, not 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 169 

even the Attic bee himself, is reported to have left 
any protest against it, or indeed to have left much of 
the ale. 

But stop : perhaps I am intruding upon other men's 
space. Speaking, therefore, now finally to the prin- 
cipal question, How far did this memorable experiment 
succeed ? I reply, that, in the sense of realizing all 
that the joint revivers proposed to realize, it succeeded ; 
and failed only where these revivers had themselves 
failed to comprehend the magnificent tendencies of 
Greek tragedy, or where the limitations of our theatres, 
arising out of our habits and social differences, had 
made it impossible to succeed. In London, I believe 
that there are nearly thirty theatres, and many more, 
if every place of amusement (not bearing the technical 
name of theatre) were included. All these must be 
united to compose a building such as that which re- 
ceived the vast audiences, and consequently the vast 
spectacles, of some ancient cities. And yet, from a 
great mistake in our London and Edinburgh attempts to 
imitate the stage of the Greek theatres, little use was 
made of such advantages as really were at our disposal. 
The possible depth of the Edinburgh stage was not 
laid open. Instead of a regal hall in Thebes, I protest 
I took it for the boudoir of Antigone. It was painted 
in light colors, an error which was abominable, though 
possibly meant by the artist (but quite unnecessarily) 
as a proper ground for relieving the sumptuous dresses 
of the leading performers. The doors of entrance and 
exit were most unhappily managed. As to the dresses, 
those of Creon, of his queen, and of the two loyal 
sisters, were good : chaste, and yet princely. The dress 
of the chorus was as bad as bad as could be : a few 



170 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

surplices borrowed from Episcopal chapels, or rather 
the ornamented albes^ &c. from any rich Roman 
Catholic establishment, would have been more effec- 
tive. The Coi'yphceus himself seemed, to my eyes, no 
better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or 
boring, and wearing a House to hide his working dress. 
These ill-used men ought to ' strike ' for better clothes, 
in case Antigone should again revisit the glimpses 
of an Edinburgh moon ; and at the same time they 
might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hin- 
drances to a perfect restoration of a Greek tragedy, 
lie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be re- 
moved, because bound up with their purposes. 1 
suppose that Salisbury Plain would seem too vast a 
theatre : but at least a cathedral would be required in 
dimensions, York Minster or Cologne. Lamp-light 
gives to us some advantages which the ancients had 
not. But much art would be required to train and 
organize the lights and the masses of superincumbent 
gloom, that should be such as to allow no calculation 
of the dimensions overhead. Aboriginal night should 
brood over the scene, and the sweeping movements of 
the scenic groups : bodily expression should be given 
to the obscure feeling of that dark power which moved 
in ancient tragedy : and we should be made to know 
why it is that, with the one exception of the PerscB, 
founded on the second Persian invasion,ii in which 
^schylus, the author, was personally a combatant, and 
therefore a contemporary^ not one of the thirty-four 
Greek tragedies surviving, but recedes into the dusky 
shades of the heroic, or even fabulous times. 

A failure, therefore, I think the ' Antigone,' in rela- 
tion to an object that for us is unattainable ; but a 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 171 

failure worth more than many ordinary successes. We 
are all deeply indebted to Mr. Murray's liberality, in two 
senses ; to his liberal interest in the noblest section of 
ancient literature, and to his liberal disregard of ex- 
pense. To have seen a Grecian play is a great 
remembrance. To have seen Miss Helen Faucit's 
Antigone, were that all, with her bust, wg ayaXi.iarog,'^^ 
and her uplifted arm 'pleading against unjust tribu- 
nals,' is worth what is it worth ? Worth the 

money ? How mean a thought ! To see Helen, to 
see Helen of Greece, was the chief prayer of Marlow's 
Dr. Faustus ; the chief gift which he exacted from the 
fiend. To see Helen of Greece ? Dr. Faustus, we 
have seen her : Mr. Murray is the Mephistopheles that 
showed her to us. It was cheap at the price of a 
journey to Siberia, and is the next best thing to having 
seen Waterloo at sunset on the 18th of June, 1815.^^ 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 139. 

* When sown ; ' as it lias been repeatedly ; a fact wliich some 
readers may not be aware of. 

Note 2. Page 141. 

Boileau, it is true, translated Longinus. But there goes little 
Greek to that. It is in dealing with Attic Greek, and Attic poetSf 
that a man can manifest his Grecian skill. 

Note 3. Page 143. 

* Before God was known ; ' — i. e. known in Greece. 

Note 4. Page 146. 

At times, I say pointedly, the Athenian rather than the Grecian 
tragedy, in order to keep the reader's attention awake to a re- 
mark made by Paterculus, — viz. That although Greece coquet- 
tishly welcomed homage to herself, as generally concerned in the 
Greek literature, in reality Athens only had any original share in 
the drama, or in the oratory of Greece. 

Note 5. Page 150. 

'The supreme artist:' — It is chiefly by comparison with 
Eui-ipides, that Sophocles is usually crowned with the laurels 
of art. But there is some danger of doing wrong to the truth in 
too blindly adhering to these old rulings of critical courts. The 
judgments would sometimes be reversed, if the pleadings were 
before us. There were blockheads in those days. Undoubtedly 

[173] 



174 NOTES. 

it is past denying that Euripides at times betrays marks of care- 
lessness in the structure of his plots, as if writing too much in a 
hurry : the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy, and 
the evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to see 
that he would have remoulded them in a revised edition, or 
diaskeue [diaoysvy].] On the other hand, I remember nothing in 
the Greek drama more worthy of a great artist than parts in his 
PhcEnissae. Neither is he the effeminately tender, or merely 
pathetic poet that some people imagine. He was able to sweep 
all the chords of the impassioned spirit. But the whole of this 
subject is in arrear : it is in fact res integray almost unbroken 
ground. 

Note 6. Page 154. 

I see a possible screw loose at this point : if you see it, reader, 
have the goodness to hold your tongue. 



Note 7. Page 157. 

'Athenian Theatre : ' — Many corrections remain to be made. 
Athens, in her bloom, was about as big as Calcutta, which con- 
tained, forty years ago, more than half a million of people ; or as 
Naples, which (being long rated at three hundred thousand), is 
now known to contain at least two hundred thousand more. The 
well known census of Demetrius Phalereus gave twenty-one 
thousand citizens. Multiply this by 5, or 4|, and you have their 
families. Add ten thousand, multiplied by 4^, for the Inquilini. 
Then add four hundred thousand for the slaves : total, about five 
hundred and fifty thousand. But upon the fluctuations of the 
Athenian population there is much room for speculation. And, 
quaere, was not the population of Athens greater two centuries 
before Demetrius, in the days of Pericles ? 



Note 8. Page 159. 

Having no Sophocles at hand, I quote from memory, not pre- 
tending therefore to exactness : but the sense is what I state. 



NOTES. 175 

Note 9. Page 161. 

Whose version, I do not know. But one unaccountable error 
was forced on one's notice. Thebes, which, by Milton and by 
every scholar is made a monosyllable, is here made a dissyllable. 
But Thebez, the dissyllable, is a Syrian city. It is true that 
Causabon deduces from a Syriac word meaning a case or enclosure 
(a theca), the name of Thebes, whether Boeotian or Egyptian. It 
is probable, therefore, that Thebes the hundred-gated of Upper 
Egypt, Thebes the seven-gated of Greece, and Thebes of Syria, 
had all one origin as regards the name. But this matters not ; 
it is the English name that we are concerned with. 

Note 10. Page 162. 

* False : ' or rather inaccurate. The burlesque was not on the 
Antigone, but on the Medea of Euripides ; and very amusing. 

Note 11. Page 170. 

But in this instance, perhaps, distance of space, combined with 
the unrivalled grandeur of the war, was felt to equiponderate the 
distance of time, Susa, the Persian capital, being fourteen hun- 
dred miles from Athens. 

Note 12. Page 171. 

^TiQva &'v)g ayaXuarog, her bosom as the bosom of a statue; an 
expression of Euripides, and applied, I think, to Polyxena at the 
moment of her sacrifice on the tomb of Achilles, as the bride that 
was being married to him at the moment of his death. 

Note 13. Page 171. 

Amongst the questions which occurred to me as requiring an 
answer, in connection with this revival, was one with regard to 
the comparative fitness of the Antigone for giving a representa- 
tive idea of the Greek stage. I am of opinion that it was the 
worst choice which could have been made ; and for the very 
reason which no doubt governed that choice, viz. — because the 
austerity of the tragic passion is disfigured by a love episode. 



176 NOTES. 

Rousseau in his letter to D'Alembert upon his article Geneve, in 
the French Encyclopedic, asks, — ' Qui est-ce qui doute que, sur 
nos theatres, la ineilleure piece de Sophocle ne tombdt tout-d-platl' 
And his reason (as collected from other passages) is — because 
an interest derived from the passion of sexual loye can rarely be 
found on the Greek stage, and yet cannot be dispensed with on 
that of Paris. But 'why was it so rare on the Greek stage ? Not 
from accident, but because it did not harmonize with the prin- 
ciple of that stage, and its vast overhanging gloom. It is the 
great infirmity of the French, and connected constitutionally with 
the gayety of their temperament, that they cannot sympathize 
with this terrific mode of grandeur. We can. And for us the 
choice should have been more purely and severely Grecian ; whilst 
the slenderness of the plot in any Greek tragedy, would require 
a far more efiective support from tumultuous movement in the 
chorus. Even the French are not uniformly insensible to this 
Grecian grandeur. I remember that Voltaire, amongst many 
just remarks on the Electra of Sophocles, mixed with others that 
are not just, bitterly condemns this demand for a love fable on 
the French stage, and illustrates its extravagance by the French 
tragedy on the same subject, of Crebillon. He (in default of any 
more suitable resource) has actually made Electra, whose char- 
acter on the Greek stage is painfully vindictive, in love with an 
imaginary son of -^gisthus, her father's murderer. Something 
should also have been said of Mrs. Leigh Murray's Ismene, which 
was very effective in supporting and in relieving the magnificent 
impression of Antigone. I ought also to have added a note on 
the scenic mask, and the common notion (not authorized, I am 
satisfied, by the practice in the supreme era of Pericles), that it 
exhibited a Janus face, the windward side expressing grief or 
horror, the leeward expressing tranquillity. Believe it not, 
reader. But on this and other points, it will be better to speak 
circumstantially, in a separate paper on the Greek drama, as a 
majestic but very exclusive and almost, if one may say so, bigoted 
form of the scenic art. 



THE MARQUESS WELLESIEY.* 

It sounds like the tolling of funeral bells, as the 
annunciation is made of one death after another 
amongst those who supported our canopy of empire 
through the last most memorable generation. The 
eldest of the Wellesleys is gone : he is gathered to 
his fathers ; and here we have his life circumstantially 
written. 

Who, and of what origin are the Wellesleys .'' There 
is an impression current amongst the public, or there 
was an impression, that the true name of the Wellesley 
family is Wesley. This is a case very much resem- 
bling some of those imagined by the old scholastic 
logicians, where it was impossible either to deny or to 
affirm : saying yes^ or saying wo, equally you told a 
falsehood. The facts are these : the family was origi- 
nally English ; and in England, at the earliest era, 
there is no doubt at all that its name was De Welles 
leigh, which was pronounced in the eldest times just ais 
it is now, viz. as a dissyllable,! the first syllable 
sounding exactly like the cathedral city Wells, in 

* Memoirs and Correspondence. 

i 'As a dissyllable : ' — just as the Annesley family, of which 
Lord Valentia is the present head, do not pronoiince their name 
trisyllabically (as strangers often suppose) ■, but as the two sylla- 
bles Anns lea, accent on the first. 

[177] 



178 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

Somersetshire, and the second like lea^ (a field lying 
fallow.) It is plain enough, from various records, that 
the true historical genesis of the name, was precisely- 
through that composition of words, which here, for the 
moment, I had imagined merely to illustrate its pro- 
nunciation. Lands in the diocese of Bath and Wells, 
lying by the pleasant river Perret, and almost up to 
the gates of Bristol, constituted the earliest possessions 
of the De Weilesleighs. They, seven centuries before 
Assay, and Waterloo, were ' seised ' of certain rich leas 
belonging to Wells. And from these Saxon elements 
of the name, some have supposed the Wellesleys a 
Saxon race. They could not possibly have better 
blood: but still the thing does not follow from the 
premises. Neither does it follow from the de that 
they were Norman. The first De Wellesley known to 
history, the very tip-top man of the pedigree, is Ave- 
nant de Wellesleigh. About a hundred years nearer 
to our own times, viz. in 1239, came Michael de Welles- 
leigh; of whom the important fact is recorded, that 
he was the father of Wellerand de Wellesley. And 
what did young Mr. Wellerand perform in this wicked 
world, that the proud muse of history should con- 
descend to notice his rather singular name ? Reader, 
he was — 'killed:' that is all; and in company with 
Sir Robert de Percival ; which again argues his Somer- 
setshire descent : for the family of Lord Egmont, the 
head of all Percivals, ever was, and ever will be, in 
Somersetshire. But how was he killed? The time 
when, viz. 1303, the place where, are known : but the 
manner hoiv, is not exactly stated ; it was in skirmish 
with rascally Irish 'kernes,' fellows that (when pre- 
sented at the font of Christ for baptism) had their right 



THE BIARQUESS WELLESLEY. 179 

arms covered up from the baptismal waters, in order 
that, still remaining consecrated to the devil, those 
arms might inflict a devilish blow. Such a blow, with 
such an unbaptized arm, the Irish villain struck ; and 
there was an end of Wellerand de Wellesleigh. Strange 
that history should make an end of a man, before it 
had made a beginning of him. These, however, are 
the facts ; which, in writing a romance about Sir Wel- 
lerand and Sir Percival, I shall have great pleasure in 
falsifying. But how, says the too curious reader, did 
the De Wellesleighs find themselves amongst Irish 
kernes ? Had these scamps the presumption to invade 
Somersetshire ? Did they dare to intrude into Wells ? 
Not at all : but the pugnacious De Wellesleys had 
dared to intrude into Ireland. Some say in the train 
of Henry II. Some say — but no matter : there they 
were : and there they stuck like limpets. They soon 
engrafted themselves into the county of Kildare ; from 
which, by means of a fortunate marriage, they leaped 
into the county of Meath ; and in that county, as if to 
refute the pretended mutability of human things, they 
have roosted ever since. There was once a famous 
copy of verses floating about Europe, which asserted 
that, whilst other princes were destined to fight for 
thrones, Austria — the handsome house of Hapsburgh 
— should obtain them by marriage : 

« Pugnabunt alii : tu, felix Austria, nube.' 

So of the Wellesleys : Sir Wellerand took quite the 
wrong way : not cudgelling, but courting, was the cor- 
rect way for succeeding in Kildare. Two great estates, 
by two separate marriages, the De Wellesleighs ob- 
tained in Kildare ; and, by a third marriage in a third 



180 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

generation, they obtained in the county of Meath, 
Castle Dengan (otherwise Dangan) with lordships as 
plentiful as blackberries. Castle Dangan came to 
them in the year of our Lord, 1411, i, e. before Agin- 
court : and, in Castle Dangan did Field-marshal, the 
man of Waterloo, draw his first breath, shed his first 
tears, and perpetrate his earliest trespasses. That is 
what one might call a pretty long spell for one family : 
four hundred and thirty-five years has Castle Dangan 
furnished a nursery for the Wellesley piccaninnies. 
Amongst the lordships attached to Castle Dangan was 
Mornington, which more than three centuries after- 
wards supplied an earldom for the grandfather of 
Waterloo. Any further memorabilia of the Castle 
Dangan family are not recorded, except that in 1485 
(which sure was the year of Bosworth field?) they 
began to omit the de and to write themselves Welles- 
ley tout court. From indolence, I presume : for a 
certain lady Di. le Fl., whom once I knew, a Howard 
by birth, of the house of Suffolk, told me as her reason 
for omitting the Le, that it caused her too much addi- 
tional trouble. 

So far the evidence seems in favor of Wellesley and 
against Wesley. But, on the other hand, during the 
last three centuries the Wellesleys wrote the name 
Wesley. They, however, were only the maternal an- 
cestors of the present Wellesleys. Garret Wellesley, 
the last male heir of the direct line, in the year 1745, 
left his whole estate to one of the Cowleys, a Stafford- 
shire family who had emigrated to Ireland in Queen 
Elizabeth's time, but who were, however, descended 
from the Wellesleys. This Cov/ley or Colley, taking, 
in 1745, the name of Wesley, received from George 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 



181 



11, the title of Earl Mornington : and CoUey's grand- 
son, the Marquess Wellesley of our age, was recorded 
in the Irish peerage as Wesley, Earl of Mornington ; 
was uniformly so described up to the end of the eigh- 
teenth century ; and even Arthur of Waterloo, whom 
most of us Europeans know pretty well, on going to 
India a little before his brother, was thus introduced by 
Lord Cornwallis to Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth, 
the Governor- general), 'Dear sir, I beg leave to intro- 
duce to you Colonel Wesley, who is a lieutenant-colonel 
of my regiment. He is a sensible man, and a good 
officer.' Posterity, for ive are posterity in respect of 
Lord Cornwallis, have been very much of Ids opinion. 
Colonel Wesley really is a sensible man; and the 
sensible man, soon after his arrival in Bengal, 
under the instigation of his brother, resumed the old 
name of Wellesley. In reality, the name of Wesley 
was merely the abbreviation of indolence, as Chumley 
for Cholmondeley, Pomfret for Pontefract, Cicester for 
Cirencester ; or, in Scotland, Marchbanks for Majori- 
banks, Chatorow for the Duke of Hamilton's French 
title of Chatelherault. I remember myself, in child- 
hood, to have met a niece of John Wesley the Proto- 
Methodist, who always spoke of the second Lord 
Mornington (author of the well-known glees) as a 
cousin, and as intimately connected with her brother 
the gmdlfoudroyant performer on the organ. Southey, 
in his Life of John Wesley, tells us that Charles 
Wesley, the brother of John, and father of the great 
organist, had the offer from Garret Wellesley of those 
same estates which eventually were left to Richard 
Cowley. This argues a recognition of near consan- 
guinity. Why the offer was declined, is not distinctly 



182 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

explained. But if it had been accepted, Southey 
thinks that then we should have had no storming of 
Seringapatam, no Waterloo, and no Arminian Metho- 
dists. All that is not quite clear. Tippoo was booked 
for a desperate British vengeance by his own desperate 
enmity to our name, though no Lord Wellesley had 
been Governor-General. Napoleon, by the same fury 
of hatred to us, was booked for the same fate, though 
the scene of it might not have been Waterloo. And, 
as to John Wesley, why should he not have made the 
same schism with the English Church, because his 
brother Charles had become unexpectedly rich ? 

The Marquess Wellesley was of the same standing, 
as to age, or nearly so, as Mr. Pitt ; though he outlived 
Pitt by almost forty years. Born in 1760, three or 
four months before the accession of George III., he 
was sent to Eton, at the age of eleven ; and from Eton, 
in his eighteenth year, he was sent to Christ Church, 
Oxford, where he matriculated as a nobleman. He 
then bore the courtesy title of Viscount Wellesley ; but 
in 1781, when he had reached his twenty-first year, he- 
was summoned away from Oxford by the death of his 
father, the second Earl of Mornington. It is interest- 
ing, at this moment, to look back on the family group 
of children collected at Dangan Castle. The young 
earl was within a month of his majority : his younger 
brothers and sisters were, William Wellesley Pole 
(since dead, under the title of Lord Maryborough), 
then aged eighteen ; Anne, since married to Henry, 
son of Lord Southampton, aged thirteen ; Arthur, aged 
twelve ; Gerald Valerian, now in the church, aged 
ten ; Mary Elizabeth (since Lady Culling Smith), aged 
nine ; Henry, since Lord Cowley, and British ambas- 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 183 

sador to Spain, France, &c. aged eight. The new 
Lord Mornington showed his conscientious nature, by 
assuming his father's debts, and by superintending the 
education of his brothers. He had distinguished him- 
self at Oxford as a scholar ; but he returned thither no 
more, and took no degree. As Earl of Mornington, 
he sat in the Irish House of Lords ; but not being a 
British peer, he was able to sit also in the English 
House of Commons ; and of this opening for a more 
national career, he availed himself at the age of 
twenty-four. Except that he favored the claims of the 
Irish Catholics, his policy was pretty uniformly that 
of Mr. Pitt. He supported that minister throughout 
the contests on the French Revolution ; and a little 
earlier, on the Regency question. This came forward 
in 1788, on occasion of the first insanity which attacked 
George III. The reader, who is likely to have been 
born since that era, will perhaps not be acquainted 
with the constitutional question then at issue. It was 
this : Mr. Fox held that, upon any incapacity arising 
in the sovereign, the regency would then settle {ipso 
facto of that incapacity) upon the Prince of Wales ; 
overlooking altogether the case in which there should 
he no Prince of Wales, and the case in which such a 
Prince might be as incapable, from youth, of exer- 
cising the powers attached to the office, as his father 
from disease. Mr. Pitt denied that a Prince of Wales 
simply as such, and apart from any moral fitness which 
he might possess, had more title to the office of regent 
than any lamp -lighter or scavenger. It \vas the prov- 
ince of Parliament exclusively to legislate for the par- 
ticular case. The practical decision of the question 
was not called for, from the accident of the king's 



184 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

sudden recovery : but in Ireland, from the indepen- 
dence asserted by the two houses of the British councils, 
the question grew still more complex. The Lord 
Lieutenant refused to transmit their address,* and 
Lord Mornington supported him powerfully in his 
refusal. 

Ten years after this hot collision of parties, Lord 
Mornington was appointed Governor-General of India ; 
and now first he entered upon a stage worthy of his 
powers. I cannot myself agree with Mr. Pearce, that 
'the wisdom of his policy is now universally recog- 
nized ; ' because the same false views of our Indian 
position, which at that time caused his splendid ser- 
vices to be slighted in many quarters, still prepon- 
derates. All administrations alike have been intensely 
ignorant of Indian politics ; and for the natural reason, 
that the business of home politics leaves them no dis- 
posable energies for affairs so distant, and with which 
each man's chance of any durable connection is so 
exceedingly small. What Lord Mornington did was 
this : he looked our prospects in the face. Two great 
enemies were then looming upon the horizon, both 
ignorant of our real resources, and both deluded by 
our imperfect use of such resources, as, even in a pre- 
vious war, we had possessed. One of these enemies 
was Tippoo, the Sultan of Mysore : him, by the crush- 
ing energy of his arrangements. Lord Mornington was 
able utterly to destroy, and to distribute his dominions 
with equity and moderation, yet so as to prevent any 

* Which adopted neither view ; for by offering the regency of 
Ireland to the Prince of Wales, they negatived Mr. Fox's view, 
who held it to be the Prince's by inherent right ; and, on the 
other hand, they still more openly opposed Mr. Pitt. 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 185 

new coalition arising in that quarter against the British 
power. There is a portrait of Tippoo, of this very- 
tiger, in the second volume of Mr. Pearce's work, 
which expresses sufficiently the mnparalleled ferocity 
of his nature ; and it is guaranteed, by its origin, as 
authentic. Tippoo, from the personal interest investing 
him, has more fixed the attention of Europe than a 
much more formidable enemy : that enemy was the 
Mahratta confederacy, chiefly existing in the persons 
of the Peishwah, of Scindia, of Holkar, and the Rajah 
of Berar. Had these four princes been less profoundly 
ignorant, had they been less inveterately treacherous, 
they would have cost us the only dreadful struggle 
which in India we have stood. As it was. Lord Morn- 
ington's government reduced and crippled the Mah- 
rattas to such an extent, that in 1817, Lord Hastings 
found it possible to crush them for ever. Three ser- 
vices of a profounder nature. Lord Wellesley was 
enabled to do for India ; first, to pave the way for the 
propagation of Christianity, — mighty service, stretch- 
ing to the clouds, and which, in the hour of death, 
must have given him consolation ; secondly, to enter 
upon the abolition of such Hindoo superstitions as are 
most shocking to humanity, particularly the practice 
of Suttee, and the barbarous exposure of dying per- 
sons, or of first-born infants at Sanger on the Ganges ; 
finally, to promote an enlarged system of education, 
which (if his splendid scheme had been adopted) would 
have diffused its benefits all over India. It ought also 
to be mentioned that the expedition by way of the Red 
Sea against the French in Egypt, was so entirely of 
his suggestion and his preparation, that, to the great 
dishonor of Messrs. Pitt and Dundas, whose adminis- 
16 



186 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

tration was the worst, as a war administration, that 
ever misapplied, or non-applied, the resources of a 
mighty empire, it languished for eighteen months 
purely through their neglect. 

In 1805, having staid about seven years in India, 
Lord Mornington was recalled, was created Marquess 
of Wellesley, was sent, in 1821, as Viceroy to Ireland, 
where there was little to do ; having previously, in 
1809, been sent Ambassador to the Spanish Cortes, 
where there was an affinity to do, but no means of 
doing it. The last great political act of Lord Welles- 
ley, was the smashing of the Peel ministry in 1834 ; 
viz. by the famous resolution (which he personally 
drew up) for appropriating to general education in 
Ireland any surplus arising from the revenues of the 
Irish Church. Full of honors, he retired from public 
life at the age of seventy-five, and, for seven years 
more of life, dedicated his time to such literary pur- 
suits as he had found most interesting in early youth. 

Mr. Pearce, who is so capable of writing vigorously 
and sagaciously, has too much allowed himself to rely 
upon public journals. For example, he reprints the 
whole of the attorney-general's official information 
against eleven obscure persons, who, from the gallery 
of the Dublin theatre, did 'wickedly, riotously, and 
routously' hiss, groan, insult, and assault (to say 
nothing of their having caused and procured to be 
hissed, groaned, &c.) the Marquess Wellesley, Lord- 
Lieutenant General, and General Governor of Ireland. 
This document covers more than nine pages ; and, 
after all, omits the only fact of the least consequence, 
viz., that several missiles were thrown by the rioters 
into the vice-regal box, and amongst them a quart- 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 187 

bottle, which barely missed his excellency s temples. 
Considering the impetus acquired by the descent from 
the gallery, there is little doubt that such a weapon 
would have killed Lord Wellesley on the spot. In de- 
fault however, of this weighty fact, the attorney-general 
favors us with memorializing the very best piece of 
doggerel that I remember to have read ; viz., that upon 
divers, to wit, three thousand papers, the rioters had 
wickedly and maliciously written and printed, besides, 
observe, causing to be written and printed, 'No 
Popery,' as also the following traitorous couplet — 

* The Protestants want Talbot, 
As the Papists have got all but ; ' 

Meaning 'all but' that which they got some years 
later by means of the Clare election. Yet if, in some 
instances like this, Mr. Pearce has too largely drawn 
upon olficial papers, which he should rather have ab- 
stracted and condensed, on the other hand, his work 
has a specific value in bringing forward private docu- 
ments, to which his opportunities have gained him 
a confidential access. Two portraits of Lord Welles- 
ley, one in middle life, and one in old age, from 
a sketch by the Comte d'Orsay, are felicitously exe- 
cuted. 

Something remains to be said of Lord Wellesley as a 
literary man ; and towards such a judgment Mr. Pearce 
has contributed some very pleasing materials. As a 
public speaker. Lord Wellesley had that degree of 
brilliancy and effectual vigor, which might have been 
expected in a man of great talents, possessing much 
native sensibility to the charms of style, but not led by 
any personal accidents of life into a separate cultiva- 



188 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

vation of oratory, or into any profound investigation 
of its duties and its powers on the arena of a British 
senate. There is less call for speaking of Lord Welles- 
ley in this character, where he did not seek for any 
eminent distinction, than in the more general character 
of an elegant litterateur^ which furnished to him much 
of his recreation in all stages of his life, and much of 
his consolation in the last. It is interesting to see this 
accomplished nobleman, in advanced age, when other 
resources were one by one decaying, and the lights of 
life were successively fading into darkness, still cheer- 
ing his languid hours by the culture of classical litera- 
ture, and in his eighty-second year drawing solace 
from those same pursuits which had given grace and 
distinction to his twentieth. 

One or two remarks I will make upon Lord Welles- 
ley's verses — Greek as well as Latin. The Latin 
lines upon Chantrey's success at Holkham in killing 
two woodcocks at the first shot, which subsequently he 
sculptured in marble and presented to Lord Leicester, 
are perhaps the most felicitous amongst the whole. 
Masquerading, in Lord Wellesley's verses, as Praxi- 
teles, who could not well be represented with a Manon 
having a percussion lock, Chantrey is armed with a 
bow and arrows : 

' En ! trajecit aves una sagitta duas.' 

In the Greek translation of PartheiiopcEus, there are as 
few faults as could reasonably be expected. But, first, 
one word as to the original Latin poem : to whom does 
it belong ? It is traced first to Lord Grenville, who 
received it from his tutor (afterwards Bishop of Lon- 
don), who had taken it as an anonymous poem from 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 189 

the ' Censor's book ; ' and with very little probability, 
it is doubtfully assigned to ' Lewis of the War Office,' 
meaning, no doubt, the father of Monk Lewis. By this 
anxiety in tracing its pedigree, the reader is led to ex- 
aggerate the pretensions of the little poem; these are 
inconsiderable : and there is a conspicuous fault, which 
it is worth while noticing, because it is one peculiarly 
besetting those who write modern verses with the help 
of a gradus, viz. that the Pentameter is often a mere 
reverberation of the preceding Hexameter. Thus, for 
instance — 

' Parthenios inter saltus non amplius erro, 
Non repeto Dryadum pascua Iseta choris ; ' 

and so of others, where the second line is but a varia- 
tion of the first. Even Ovid, with all his fertility, and 
partly in consequence of his fertility, too often commits 
this fault. Where indeed the thought is effectually 
varied, so that the second line acts as a musical minor ^ 
succeeding to the major ^ in the first, there may happen 
to arise a peculiar beauty. But I speak of the ordinary 
case, where the second is merely the rebound of the 
first, presenting the sam.e thought in a diluted form. 
This is the commonest resource of feeble thinking, and 
is also a standing temptation or snare for feeble think- 
ing. Lord Wellesley, however, is not answerable for 
these faults in the original, which indeed he notices 
slightly as ' repetitions ; ' and his own Greek version is 
spirited and good. There, are, however, some mistakes. 
The second line is altogether faulty ; 

XaiQia MaivaXim navr* iQareiva fi£<j» 

does not express the sense intended. Construed cor- 



190 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

rectly, this clause of the sentence would mean — 'J 
sorrowfully leaving all places gracious to the Mcena- 
lian god : ' but that is not what Lord Wellesley de- 
signed : ' I leaving the woods of Cyllene, and the 
snowy summits of Pholoe, places that are all of them 
dear to Pan ' — that is what was meant : that is to 
say, not leaving all places deiir to Pan, far from it ; 
but leaving a few places, every one of which is dear to 
Pan. In the line beginning 

Kav s6 v(p' ijXixiag 

where the meaning is — and if as yet, hy reason of my 
immature age, there is a metrical error ; and ^ilixia will 
not express immaturity of age. I doubt whether in the 
next line, 

Mj/(5' uXy.i] Fallot yovvaaiv i]i6Bog 

yovraatv could convcy the meaning without the preposi- 
tion sv. And in 

^JisQxofiai ov y.u?.BOVOi -d^soi. 

I hasten whither the gods summon me — ^^ is not the 
right word. It is, however, almost impossible to write 
Greek verses which shall be liable to no verbal objec- 
tions; and the fluent movement of these verses suf- 
ficiently argues the off-hand ease with which Lord 
Wellesley must have read Greek, writing it so ele- 
gantly and with so little of apparent constraint. 

Meantime the most interesting (from its circum- 
stances) of Lord Wellesley 's verses, is one to which 
his own English interpretation of it has done less than 
justice. It is a Latin epitaph on the daughter (an only 
child) of Lord and Lady Brougham. She died, and 
(as was generally known at the time) of an organic 
affection disturbing the action of the heart, at the early 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 191 

age of eighteen. And the peculiar interest of the case 
lies in the suppression by this pious daughter (so far 
as it was possible) of her own bodily anguish, in order 
to beguile the mental anguish of her parents. The 
Latin epitaph is this : 

* Blanda anima, e cunis heu ! longo exercita morbo, 
Inter maternas beu lachrymasque patris, 
Quas risu leuire tuo jucunda solebas, 

Et levis, et proprii vix memor ipsa mali ; 
I, pete calestes, ubi nulla est cura, recessus : 
Et tibi sit nullo mista dolore quies ! ' 

The English version is this : 

' Doom'd to long suffering from earliest years, 
Amidst your parents' grief and pain alone 
Cheerful and gay, you smiled to soothe their tears ; 
And in their agonies forgot your own. 
" Go, gentle spirit ; and among the blest 

From grief and pain eternal be thy rest ! ' 

In the Latin, the phrase e cunis does not express 
from your cradle upwards. The second line is faulty 
in the opposition of maternas to patris. And in the 
fourth line levis conveys a false meaning : levis must 
mean either physically lights i. e. not heavy, which is 
not the sense, or else tainted with levity, which is still 
less the sense. What Lord Wellesley wished to say — 
was light-hearted : this he has not said : but neither is 
it easy to say it in good Latin. 

I complain, however, of the whole as not bringing 
out Lord Weslesley's own feeling — which feeling is 
partly expressed in his verses, and partly in his accom- 
panying prose note on Miss Brougham's mournful 
destiny (' her life was a continual illness ') contrasted 
with her fortitude, her innocent gaiety, and the pious 
motives with which she supported this gaiety to the 



192 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

last. Not as a direct version, but as filling up the out- 
line of Lord Wellesley, sufficiently indicated by him- 
self, I propose this : — 

* Child, that for thirteen years hast fought with pain, 

PromiDted by joy and depth of natural love, — 
Rest now at God's command : oh ! not in vain 

His angel ofttimes watch'd thee, — oft, above 
All pangs, that else had dimm'd thy parents' eyes, 
Saw thy young heart victoriously rise. 
Rise now for ever, self-forgetting child, 

Rise to those choirs, where love like thine is blest. 
From pains of flesh — from filial tears assoil'd, 

Love which God's hand shall crown with God's own rest * 



MILTON VERSUS SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

This conversation is doubly interesting : interesting 
by its subject, interesting by its interlocutors ; for the 
subject is Milton, whilst the interlocutors are Soutliey 
and Landor. If a British gentleman, when taking his 
pleasure in his well-armed, yacht, descries, in some 
foreign waters, a noble vessel, from the Thames or the 
Clyde, riding peaceably at anchor — and soon after, 
two smart-looking clippers, with rakish masts, bearing 
down upon her in company — he slackens sail: his 
suspicions are slightly raised; they have not shown 
their teeth as yet, and perhaps all is right ; but there 
can be no harm in looking a little closer; and, as- 
suredly, if he finds any mischief in the wind against 
his countryman, he will show his teeth also ; and, 
please the wind, will take up such a position as to rake 
both of these pirates by turns. The two dialogists are 
introduced walking out after breakfast, ' each his Mil- 
ton in his pocket ; ' and says Southey, ' Let us collect 
all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, with- 
out a too minute and troublesome research;' — just 
so; there would be danger in that — help might put 
off from shore ; — ' not,' says he, ' in the spirit of John- 
son, but in our own.' Johnson we may suppose, is 
some old ruffian well known upon that coast; and 
'faults ' may be a flash term for what the Americans 
17 [193] 



194 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

call ' notions.' A part of the cargo it clearly is ; and 
one is not surprised to hear Landor, whilst assenting 
to the general plan of attack, suggesting in a whisper, 
' that they should abase their eyes in reverence to so 
great a man, without absolutely closing them ; ' which 
I take to mean — that, without trusting entirely to their 
boarders, or absolutely closing their ports, they should 
depress their guns and fire down into the hold, in re- 
spect of the vessel attacked standing so high out of the 
water. After such plain speaking, nobody can wonder 
much at the junior pirate (Landor) muttering, ' It will 
be difficult for us always to refrain,' Of course it will : 
refraining was no part of the business, I should fancy, 
taught by that same buccaneer, Johnson. There is 
mischief, you see, reader, singing in the air — ' miching 
malhecho ' — and it is our business to watch it. 

But, before coming to the main attack, I must suffer 
myself to be detained for a few moments by what Mr. 
L. premises upon the ' moral ' of any great fable, 
and the relation which it bears, or should bear, to the 
solution of such a fable. Philosophic criticism is so 
far improved, that, at this day, few people, who have 
reflected at all upon such subjects, but are agreed as 
to one point: viz., that in metaphysical language the 
moral of an epos or a drama should be immanent^ not 
transient ; or, otherwise, that it should be vitally dis- 
tributed through the whole organization of the tree, not 
gathered or secreted into a sort of red berry or race- 
mus, pendent at the end of its boughs. This view Mr. 
Landor himself takes, as a general view ; but, strange 
to say, by some Landorian perverseness, where there 
occurs a memorable exception to this rule (as in the 
' Paradise Lost'), in that case he insists upon the rule 



MILTON VS. SOTJTHEY AND LANDOR. 195 

m its rigor — the rule, and nothing lut the rule. 
Where, on the contrary, the rule does really and ob- 
viously take effect (as in the 'Iliad' and ' Odyssey'), 
there he insists upon an exceptional case. There is 
a moral, in his opinion, hanging like a tassel of gold 
bullion from the 'Iliad;' — and what is it? Some- 
thing so fantastic, that I decline to repeat it. As well 
might he have said, that the moral of ' Othello ' was — 
' Try Warren's Blacking ! ' There is no moral, 
little or big, foul or fair, to the ' Iliad.' Up to the 17th 
book, the moral might seem dimly to be this — ' Gen- 
tlemen, keep the peace : you see what comes of quar- 
relling.' But there this moral ceases ; — there is now 
a break of guage : the narrow guage takes place after 
this; whilst up to this point, the broad guage — viz., 
the wrath of Achilles, growing out of his turn-up with 
Agamemnon — had carried us smoothly along without 
need to shift our luggage. There is no more quarrel- 
ling after Book 17, how then can there be any more 
moral from quarrelling ? If you insist on my telling 
you what is the moral of the ' Iliad,' I insist upon your 
telling me what is the moral of a rattlesnake or the 
moral of a Niagara. I suppose the moral is — that 
you must get out of their way, if you mean to moralize 
much longer. The going-up (or anabasis) of the 
Greeks against Troy, was a fact ; and a pretty dense 
fact; and, by accident, the very first in which all 
Greece had a common interest. It was a joint-stock 
concern — a representative expedition — whereas, pre- 
viously there had been none ; for even the Argonautic 
expedition, which is rather of the darkest, implied no 
confederation except amongst individuals. How could 
it .'* For the Argo is supposed to have measured only 



196 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

twenty-seven tons : how she would have been classed 
at Lloyd's is hard to say, but certainly not as A 1. 
There was no state-cabin ; everybody, demi-gods and 
all, pigged in the steerage amongst beans and bacon. 
Greece was naturally proud of having crossed the her- 
ring-pond, small as it was, in search of an entrenched 
enemy ; proud also of having licked him ' into Al- 
mighty smash ; ' this was sufficient ; or if an imperti- 
nent moralist sought for something more, doubtless the 
moral must have lain in the booty. A peach is the 
moral of a peach, and moral enough ; but if a man 
will have something better — a moral within a moral — 
why, there is the peach-stone, and its kernel, out of 
which he may make ratafia, which seems to be the 
ultimate morality that can be extracted from a peach. 
Mr. Archdeacon Williams, indeed, of the Edinburgh 
Academy, has published an octavo opinion upon the 
case, which asserts that the moral of the Trojan war 
was (to borrow a phrase from children) tit for tat. It 
was a case of retaliation for crimes against Hellas, 
committed by Troy in an earlier generation. It may 
be so ; Nemesis knows best. But this moral, if it con- 
cerns the total expedition to the Troad, cannot concern 
the ' Iliad,' which does not take up matters from so 
early a period, nor go on to the final catastrophe of 
Ilium. 

Now, as to the ' Paradise Lost,' it happens that there 
is — whether there ought to be or not — a pure golden 
moral, distinctly announced, separately contemplated, 
and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realized 
by fable. It is a moral rather for the drama of a 
world than for a human poem. And this moral is 
made the more prominent and memorable by the 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 197 

grandeur of its annunciation. The jewel is not more 
splendid in itself than in its setting. Excepting the 
well-known passage on Athenian oratory in the ' Para- 
dise Regained,' there is none even in Milton where the 
metrical pomp is made so effectually to aid the pomp 
of the sentiment. Hearken to the way in which a roll 
of dactyles is made to settle, like the swell of the ad- 
vancing tide, into the long thunder of billows breaking 
for leagues against the shore : 

« That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence.' 

Hear what a motion, what a tumult, is given by the 
dactylic close to each of the introductory lines ! And 
how massily is the whole locked up into the peace of 
heaven, as the aerial arch of a viaduct is locked up 
into tranquil stability by its key-stone, through the deep 
spondaic close, 

' And justify the ways of God to man,' 
That is the moral of the Miltonic epos ; and as much 
grander than any othe-r moral formally illustrated by 
poets, as heaven is higher than earth. 

But the most singular moral, which Mr. Laodor any- 
where discovers, is in his own poem of ' Gebir.^ 
Whether he still adheres to it, does not appear from 
the present edition. But I remember distinctly, in the 
original edition, a Preface (now withdrawn) in which 
he made his acknowledgments to some book read at a 
Welsh Inn for the outline of the story ; and as to the 
moral, he declared it to be an exposition of that most 
mysterious offence, Over- Colonization. Much I mused, 
in my youthful simplicity, upon this criminal novelty. 
What might it be ? Could I, by mistake, have com- 



198 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

mitted it myself? Was it a felony, or a misde- 
meanor? — liable to transportation, or only to fine and 
imprisonment ? Neither in the Decemviral Tables, 
nor in the Code of Justinian, nor the maritime Code 
of Oleron, nor in the Canon Law, nor the Code Napo- 
leon, nor our own Statutes at large, nor in Jeremy 
Bentham, had I read of such a crime as a possibility. 
Undoubtedly the vermin, locally called Squatters^* 
both in the wilds of America and Australia, who pre- 
occupy other men's estates, have latterly illustrated the 
logical possibility of such an offence ; but they were 
quite unknown at the era of Gebir. Even Dalica, who 
knew as much wickedness as most people, would have 
stared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, as 
eagerly as 1 did — 'What is it now? Let's have a 
shy at it in Egypt.' I, indeed, knew a case, but 
Dalica did not^ of shocking over-colonization. It was 
the case, which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way 
roads, where a man, unjustly big, mounts into the in- 
side of a stage-coach already sufficiently crowded. In 
streets and squares, where men could give him a wide 
berth, they had tolerated the injustice of his person ; 
but now, in a chamber so confined, the length and 
breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to every 
eye. And if the coach should upset, which it would 

* Squatters : — They are a sort of self-elected warming-pans. 
What we in England mean by the political term ' warming-pans y* 
are men who occupy, by consent, some official place, or Par- 
liamentary seat, until the proper claimant is old enough in law 
to assume his rights. When the true man comes to bed, the 
warming-pan respectfully turns out. But these ultra-marine 
warming-pans wouldnH turn out. They showed fight, and 
wouldn't hear of the true man, even as a bed-fellow. 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 199 

not be the less likely to do for having him on board, 
somebody or other (perhaps myself) must lie beneath 
this monster, like Enceladus under Mount Etna, call- 
ing upon Jove to come quickly with a few thunderbolts 
and destroy both man and mountain, both succuhus and 
incubus, if no other relief offered. Meantime, the only 
case of over-colonization notorious to all Europe, is 
that which some German traveller (Riedesel, I think) 
has reported so eagerly, in ridicule of our supposed 
English credulity ; viz. — the case of the foreign 
swindler, who advertised that he would get into a quart 
bottle, filled Drury Lane, pocketed the admission 
money, and decamped, protesting (in his adieus to the 
spectators) that ' it lacerated his heart to disappoint so 
many noble islanders ; but that on his next visit he 
would make full reparation by getting into a vinegar 
cruet.' Now, here certainly was a case of over- 
colonization, not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet, 
when one examines this case, the crime consisted by 
no means in doing- it, but in not doing it; by no means 
in getting into the bottle, but in not getting into it. 
The foreign contractor would have been probably a 
very unhappy man, had he fulfilled his contract by 
over-colonizing the bottle, but he would have been 
decidedly a more virtuous man. He would have 
redeemed his pledge ; and, if he had even died in 
the bottle, we should have honored him as a ' vir 
bonus, cum maid fortund compositus ; ' as a man of 
honor matched in single duel with calamity, and also 
as the best of conjurers. Over-colonization, therefore, 
except in the one case of the stage-coach, is apparently 
no crime ; and the offence of King Gebir, in my eyes, 
remains a mystery to this day. 



200 MILTON VS. SOTJTHEY AND LANDOR. 

What next solicits notice is in the nature of a 
digression : it is a kind of parenthesis on Words- 
worth. 

''Landor. — When it was a matter of wonder how 
Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have written 
his " Hyperion," Shelley, whom envy never touched, 
gave as a reason — " because he was a Greek." Words- 
worth, being asked his opinion of the same poem, 
called it, scoffingly, " a pretty piece of paganism ; " yet 
he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote — and 
beautiful ones they are — reverts to the powerful in- 
fluence of the " pagan creed." ' 

Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. 
Now, nine tailors are ranked, by great masters of 
algebra, as = one man ; such is the received equa- 
tion ; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an 
old English drama, by a man who meets and quarrels 
with eighteen tailors — ' Come, hang it ! I'll fight you 
hoth.'* But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of tailors 
to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not 
always equal to the delivery of one accurate truth, or 
to a successful conflict with three or four signal errors. 
Firstly — Shelley's reason, if it ever was assigned, is 
irrelevant as regards any question that must have been 
intended. It could not have been meant to ask — 
Why was the ' Hyperion ' so Grecian in its spirit ? for 
it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it falsely 
to call it so ; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology 
of Greece was incapable of breeding anything so deep 
as the mysterious portents that, in the ' Hyperion,' run 
before and accompany the passing away of divine im- 
memorial dynasties. Nothing can be more impressive 
than the picture of Saturn in his palsy of affliction, and 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOK. 201 

of the mighty goddess his grand-daughter, or than the 
secret signs of coming woe in the palace of Hyperion. 
These things grew from darker creeds than Greece 
had ever known since the elder traditions of Pro- 
metheus — creeds that sent down their sounding plum- 
mets into far deeper wells within the human spirit. 
What had been meant, by the question proposed to 
Shelley, was no doubt — How so young a man as Keats, 
not having had the advantage of a regular classical 
education, could have been so much at home in the 
details of the elder mythology ? Tooke's ' Pantheon ' 
might have been obtained by favor of any English 
schoolboy, and Dumoustier's ' Lettres a Emile siir la 
Mijthologie ' by favor of very many young ladies ; but 
these, according to my recollection of them, would 
hardly have sufficed. Spence's ' Polymeiis' however, 
might have been had by favor of any good library ; 
and the ' Bibliotheca ' of ApoUodorus, who is the cock 
of the walk on this subject, might have been read by 
favor of a Latin translation, supposing Keats really 
unequal to the easy Greek text. There is no wonder 
in the case ; nor, if there had been, would Shelley's 
kind remark have solved it. The treatment of the 
facts must, in any case, have been due to Keats's 
genius, so as to be the same whether he had studied 
Greek or not : the facts, apart from the treatment, 
must in any case have been had from a book. Sec- 
ondly — Let Mr. Landor rely upon it — that Words- 
worth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any 
formal judgment, or what Scottish law would call 
deliverance, upon the 'Hyperion.' As to what he 
might have said incidentally and collaterally ; the 
meaning of words is so entirely affected by their posi- 



202 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

tion in a conversation — what followed, what went be- 
fore — that five words dislocated from their context 
never would be received as evidence in the Queen's 
Bench. The court which, of all others, least strictly 
weighs its rules of evidence, is the female tea-table ; 
yet even that tribunal would require the deponent to 
strengthen his evidence, if he had only five detached 
words to produce. Wordsworth is a very proud man, 
as he has good reason to be ; and perhaps it was 1, 
myself, who once said in print of him — that it is not 
the correct way of speaking, to say that Wordsworth 
is as proud as Lucifer ; but, inversely, to say of Lucifer 
that some people have conceived him to be as proud 
as Wordsworth. But, if proud, Wordsworth is not 
haughty, is not ostentatious, is not anxious for display, 
is not arrogant, and, least of all, is he capable of de- 
scending to envy. Who or what is it that he should be 
envious of? Does anybody suppose that Wordsworth 
would be jealous of Archimedes if he now walked 
upon earth, or Michael Angelo, or Milton ? Nature 
does not repeat herself. Be assured she will never 
make a second Wordsworth. Any of us would be 
jealous of his own duplicate ; and, if I had a doppel- 
ganger, who went about personating me, copying me, 
and pirating me, philosopher as I am, I might (if the 
Court of Chancery would not grant an injunction 
against him) be so far carried away by jealousy as to 
attempt the crime of murder upon his carcass ; and no 
great matter as regards him. But it would be a sad 
thing for me to find myself hanged ; and for what, I 
beseech you ? for murdering a sham, that was either 
nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. But 
if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself, 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 203 

Still that great man will not be much like Words- 
worth — the great man will not be Wordsworth's 
doppelganger. If not impar (as you say) he will be 
dispar ; and why, then, should Wordsworth be jealous 
of him, unless he is jealous of the sun, and of Abd el 
Kader, and of Mr. Waghorn — all of whom carry off a 
great deal of any spare admiration which Europe has 
to dispose of. But suddenly it strikes me that we are 
all proud, every man of us ; and I daresay with some 
reason for it, ' be the same more or less.' For I never 
came to know any man in my whole life intimately, 
who could not do something or other better than any- 
body else. The only man amongst us that is thoroughly 
free from pride, that you may at all seasons rely on as 
a pattern of humility, is the pickpocket.- That man is 
so admirable in his temper, and so used to pocketing 
anything whatever which Providence sends in his way, 
that he will even pocket a kicking, or anything in that 
line of favors which you are pleased to bestow. The 
smallest donations are by him thankfully received, 
provided only that you, whilst half-blind with anger in 
kicking him round a figure of eight, like a dexterous 
skater, will but allow him (which is no more than fair) 
to have a second ' shy ' at your pretty Indian pocket- 
handkerchief, so as to convince you, on cooler reflec- 
tion, that he does not always miss. Thirdly — Mr. 
Landor leaves it doubtful what verses those are of 
Wordsworth's which celebrate the power ' of the Pagan 
creed;' whether that sonnet in which Wordsworth 
wishes to exchange for glimpses of human life, then 
and in those circumstances, ' forlorn,' the sight 

« Of Proteus coming from the sea, 

And hear old Triton wind his wreathed horn ; ' 



204 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

whether this, or the passage on the Greek mythology 
in ' The Excursion.' Whichever he means, I am the 
last man to deny that it is beautiful, and especially if 
he means the latter. But it is no presumption to deny 
firmly Mr. Landor's assertion, that these are ' the best 
verses Wordsworth ever wrote.' Bless the man ! 

* There are a thousand such elsewhere, 
As worthy of your wonder : ' — 

Elsewhere, I mean, in Wordsworth's poems. In reality 
it is impossihle that these should be the best ; for even 
if, in the executive part, they were so, which is not the 
case, the veiy nature of the thought, of the feeling, 
and of the relation, which binds it to the general 
theme, and the nature of that theme itself, forbid the 
possibility of merits so high. The whole movement 
of the feeling is fanciful : it neither appeals to what is 
deepest in human sensibilities, nor is meant to do so. 
The result, indeed, serves only to show Mr. Lander's 
slender acquaintance with W^ordsworth. And what is 
worse than being slenderly acquainted, he is errone- 
ously acquainted even with these two short breathings 
from the Wordsworthian shell. He mistakes the logic. 
Wordsworth does not celebrate any power at all in 
Paganism. Old Triton indeed ! he's little better, in 
respect of the terrific, than a mail-coach guard, nor 
half as good, if you allow the guard his official seat, a 
coal-black night, lamps blazing back upon his royal 
scarlet, and his blunderbuss correctly slung. Triton 
would not stay, I engage, for a second look at the old 
Portsmouth mail, as once I knew it. But, alas ! better 
things than ever stood on Triton's pins are now as little 
able to stand up for themselves, or to startle the silent 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 205 

fields in darkness, with the sudden flash of their 
glory — gone before it had full come — as Triton is to 
play the Freyschi^itz chorus on his humbug of a horn. 
But the logic of Wordsworth is this — not that the 
Greek mythology is potent; on the contrary, that it 
is weaker than cowslip tea, and would not agitate 
the nerves of a hen sparrow ; but that, weak as it is — 
nay, by means of that very weakness — it does but the 
better serve to measure the weakness of something 
which he thinks yet weaker — viz. the death-like torpor 
of London society in 1808, benumbed by conventional 
apathy and worldliness — 

' Heavy as frost, and deep almosb as life.' 

This seems a digression from Milton, who is prop- 
erly the subject of this colloquy. But, luckily, it is 
not one of my sins. Mr. Landor is lord within the 
house of his own book ; he pays all accounts what- 
ever ; and readers that have either a bill, or bill of ex- 
ceptions, to tender against the concern, must draw 
upon him. To Milton he returns upon a very dangerous 
topic indeed — viz. the structure of his blank verse. 
I know of none that is so trying to a wary man's 
nerves. You might as well tax Mozart with harshness 
in the divinest passages of ' Don Giovanni,' as Milton 
with any such offence against metrical science. Be 
assured, it is yourself that do not read with understand- 
ing, not Milton that by possibility can be found deaf to 
the demands of perfect harmony. You are tempted, 
after walking round a line threescore times, to exclaim 
at last — 'Well, if the Fiend himself should rise up 
before me at this very moment, in this very study of 
mine, and say that no screw was loose in that line, 



206 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

then would I reply — ' Sir, with submission, you 

are .' '- What ! ' suppose the Fiend suddenly to 

demand in thunder ; ' what am I ? ' ' Horribly WTong,' 
you wish exceedingly to say ; but, recollecting that 
some people are choleric in argument, you confine 
yourself to the polite answer — 'That, with deference 
to his better education, you conceive him to lie ; ' — 
that's a bad word to drop your voice upon in talking 
with a fiend, and you hasten to add — under a slight, a 
very slight mistake.' Ay, you might venture on that 
opinion with a fiend. But how if an angel should 
undertake the case ? And angelic was the ear of Mil- 
ton. Many are the prima facie anomalous lines in 
Milton ; many are the suspicious lines, which in many 
a book I have seen many a critic peering into, with 
eyes made up for mischief, yet with a misgiving that 
all was not quite safe, very much like an old raven 
looking down a marrow-bone. In fact, such is the 
metrical skill of the man, and such the perfection of 
his metrical sensibility, that, on any attempt to take 
liberties with a passage of his, you feel as when 
coming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion ; 
perhaps he may not be dead, but only sleeping ; nay, 
perhaps he may not be sleeping, but only shamming. 
And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even in the 
most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after 
all, there may be a plot in it. You may be put down 
with shame by some man reading the line otherwise, 
reading it with a different emphasis, a different csesura, 
or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to 
bring out a new and self-justifying effect. It must be 
added, that, in reviewing Milton's metre, it is quite 
necessary to have such books as ' Nare's English 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDON. 207 

Orthoepy' {in a late edition)^ and others of that class, 
lying on the table ; because the accentuation of Mil- 
ton's age was, in many words, entirely different from 
ours. And Mr. Landor is not free from some sus- 
picion of inattention as to this point. Over and above 
this accentual difference, the practice of our elder 
dramatists in the resolution of the final tion (which 
now is uniformly pronounced short)., will be found ex- 
ceedingly important to the appreciation of a writer's 
verse. Contribution, which now is necessarily pro- 
nounced as a word of four syllables, would then, in 
verse, have five, being read into con-tri-hu-ce-on. 
Many readers will recollect another word, which for 
years brought John Kemble into hot water with the pit 
of Drury Lane. It was the plural of the word ache. 
This is generally made a dissyllable by the Elizabethan 
dramatists ; it occurs in the ' Tempest.' Prosper© 
says — 

' I '11 fill thy bones -witli aclies.' 

What follows, which I do not remember literatim., is 
such metrically as to require two syllables for aches. 
But how, then, was this to be pronounced ? Kemble 
thought aJcies would sound ludicrous ; aitches therefore 
he called it : and alv/ays the pit howled like a famished 
menagerie, as they did also when he chose (and he 
constantly chose) to pronounce beard like bird. Many 
of these niceties must be known, before a critic can 
ever allow himself to believe that he is right in obelizing, 
or in marking with so much as a ? any verse whatever 
of Milton's. And there are some of these niceties, I 
am satisfied, not even yet fully investigated. 

It is, however, to be borne in mind, after all allow- 



208 MILTON VS. SOUTIIEY AND LANDOR. 

ances and provisional reservations have been made, 
that Bentley's hypothesis (injudiciously as it was 
managed by that great scholar) has really a truth of 
fact to stand upon. Not only must Milton have com- 
posed his three greatest poems, the two ' Paradises ' 
and the ' Samson,' in a state of blindness — but sub- 
sequently, in the correction of the proofs, he must have 
suffered still more from this conflict with darkness, 
and, consequently, from this dependence upon care- 
less readers. This is Bentley's case : as lawyers say, 
' My lord, that is my case.' It is possible enough to 
lorite correctly in the dark, as I myself often do, when 
losing or missing my lucifers — which, like some elder 
lucifers, are always rebelliously straying into places 
where they can have no business. But it is quite im- 
possible to correct a proof in the dark. At least, if 
there is such an art, it must be a section of the black 
art. Bentley gained from Pope that admirable epithet 
of slashing, [Hhe rihhalds — from slashing Bentley 
down to piddling Theobalds,'' i. e. Tihhalds as it was 
pronounced J, altogether from his edition of the ' Para- 
dise Lost.' This the doctor founded on his own 
hypothesis as to the advantage taken of Milton's blind- 
ness ; and corresponding was the havoc which he 
made of the text. In fact, on the really just allegation 
that Milton must have used the services of an amanu- 
ensis ; and the plausible one that this amanuensis, 
being often weary of his task, would be likely to neg- 
lect punctilious accuracy ; and the most improbable 
allegation that this weary person would also be very 
conceited, and add much rubbish of his own ; Bentley 
resigned himself luxuriously, without the whisper of a 
scruple, to his own sense of what, was or was not 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 209 

poetic, which sense happened to be that of the adder 
for music. The deaf adder heareth not though the 
musician charm ever so wisely. No scholarship, 
which so far beyond other men Bentley had, could 
gain him the imaginative sensibility which, in a degree 
so far beyond average men, he wanted. Consequently, 
the world never before beheld such a scene of mas- 
sacre as his 'Paradise Lost' exhibited. He laid him- 
self down to his work of extermination like the 
brawniest of reapers going in steadily with his sickle, 
coat stripped off, and shirt sleeves tucked up, to deal 
with an acre of barley. One duty, and no other, 
rested upon his conscience ; one voice he heard — 
Slash away, and hew down the rotten growths of this 
abominable ^manuensis. The carnage was like that 
after a pitched battle. The very finest passages in 
every book of the poem were marked by italics, as 
dedicated to fire and slaughter. ' Slashing Dick ' went 
through the whole forest, like a woodman markino; 
with white paint the giant trees that must all come down 
in a month or so. And one naturally reverts to a 
passage in the poem itself, where God the Father is 
supposed to say to his Filial assessor on the heavenly 
throne, when marking the desolating progress of Sin 
and Death, — 

' See with what havoc these fell dogs advance 
To ravage this fair world.' 

But still this inhuman extravagance of Bentley, in 
following out his hypothesis, does not exonerate us 
from bearing in mind so much truth as that hypothesis 
really must have had, from the pitiable difficulties of 
the great poet's situation. 
18 



210 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

My own opinion, therefore, upon the line, for in- 
stance, from * Paradise Regained,' which Mr. Landor 
appears to have indicated for the reader's amaze- 
ment, viz. : — 

* As well might recommend 
Such solitude before choicest society,^ 

is — that it escaped revision from some accident call- 
ing off the ear of Milton whilst in the act of having the 
proof read to him. Mr. Landor silently prints it ui 
italics, without assigning his objection ; but, of course, 
that objection must be — that the line has one foot too 
much. It is an Alexandrine, such as Dryden scat- 
tered so profusely, without asking himself why ; but 
which Milton never tolerates except in the choruses 
of the Samson. 

* JVot difficult, if thou hearken to me ' — 

is one of the lines which Mr. Landor thinks that ' no 
authority will reconcile' to our ears. I think other- 
wise. The caesura is meant to fall not with the comma 
after difficult, but after thou; and there is a most 
effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan 
who speaks — Satan in the wilderness ; and he marks, 
as he wishes to mark, the tremendous opposition of 
attitude between the two parties to the temptation. 

< Not difficult if thou ' 

there let the reader pause, as if pulling up suddenly 
four horses in harness, and throwing them on their 
haunches — not difficult if thou (in some mysterious 
sense the son of God) ; and then, as with a burst of 
thunder, again giving the reins to your quadriga, . 
' hearken to me : ' 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 211 

that is, to me, that am the Prince of the Air, and able 
to perform all my promises for those that hearken to 
my temptations. 

Two lines are cited under the same ban of irrecon- 
cilability to our ears, but on a very different plea. 
The first of these lines is — 

* Launcelot, or Pellias, or Pellinore ; ' 
The other 

* Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus.^ 

The reader will readily suppose that both are objected 
to as ' roll-calls of proper names.' Now, it is very 
trae that nothing is more offensive to the mind than 
the practice of mechanically packing into metrical 
successions, as if packing a portmanteau, names with- 
out meaning or significance to the feelings. No man 
ever carried that atrocity so far as Boileau, a fact of 
which Mr. Landor is well aware ; and slight is the 
sanction or excuse that can be drawn from him. But 
it must not be forgotten that Virgil, so scrupulous in 
finish of composition, committed this fault. I remem- 
ber a passage ending 

« Noemonaque Prytaninque ; ' 

but, having no Virgil within reach, I cannot at this 
moment quote it accurately. Homer, with more ex- 
cuse, however, from the rudeness of his age, is a 
deadly offender in this way. But the cases from Mil- 
ton are very different. Milton was incapable of the 
Homeric or Virgilian blemish. The objection to such 
rolling musketry of names is, that unless interspersed 
with epithets, or broken into irregular groups by brief 
circumstances of parentage, country, or romantic inci- 



212 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

dent, they stand audaciously perking up their heads 
like lots in a catalogue, arrow-headed palisades, or 
young larches in a nursery ground, all occupying the 
same space, all drawn up in line, all mere iterations 
of each other. But in 

* Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,^ 

though certainly not a good line when insulated, 
(better, however, in its connection with the entire suc- 
cession of which it forms part), the apology is, that the 
massy weight of the separate characters enables them 
to stand like granite pillars or pyramids, proud of their 
self-supporting independency. 

Mr. Landor makes one correction by a simple im- 
provement in the punctuation, which has a very fine 
effect. Rarely has so large a result been distributed 
through a sentence by so slight a change. It is in the 
' Samson.' Samson says, speaking of himself (as 
elsewhere) with that profound pathos, which to all 
hearts invests Milton's own situation in the days of his 
old age, when he was composing that drama — 

* Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him 
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.' 

Thus it is usually printed ; that is, without a comma in 
the latter line ; but, says Landor, ' there ought to be 
commas after eyeless, after Gaza, after mill.^ And 
why ? because thus ' the grief of Samson is aggravated 
at every member of the sentence.' He (like Milton) 
was — 1. blind; 2. in a city of triumphant enemies; 
3. working for daily bread ; 4. herding with slaves ; 
Samson literally, and Milton with those whom politi- 
cally he regarded as such. 

Mr. Landor is perfectly wrong, I must take the 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 213 

liberty of saying, when he demurs to the line in 
' Paradise Regained : ' 

* From that placid aspect and meek regard,' 

on the ground that ' meek regard conveys no new idea 
to placid aspect.^ But aspect is the countenance of 
Christ when passive to the gaze of others : regard is 
the same countenance in active contemplation of those 
others whom he loves or pities. The placid aspect 
expresses, therefore, the divine rest ; the meek regard 
expresses the divine benignity : the one is the self- 
absorption of the total Godhead, the other the eternal 
emanation of the Filial Godhead. 

' By what ingenuity,' says Landor, ' can we erect 
into a verse — 

" In the bosom of bliss, and light of light ? " ' 
Now really it is by my watch exactly three minutes 
too late for him to make that objection. The court 
cannot receive it now ; for the line just this moment 
cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same 
identical structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed 
in both lines by the very same ripple, viz., a trochee 
in the second foot, placid in the one line, bosom in the 
other. They are a sort of snags, such as lie in the 
current of the Mississippi. There they do nothing but 
mischief. Here, when the lines are read in their 
entire nexus, the disturbance stretches forwards and 
backwards with good effect on the music. Besides, if 
it did not, one is willing to take a snag from Milton, 
but one does not altogether like being snagged by the 
Mississippi. One sees no particular reason for bearing 
it, if one only knew how to be revenged on a river. 
But, of these metrical skirmishes, though full of 



214 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

importance to the impassioned text of a great poet 
(for mysterious is the life that connects all modes 
of passion with rhythmus), let us suppose the casual 
reader to have had enough. And now at closing for 
the sake of change, let us treat him to a harlequin 
trick upon another theme. Did the reader ever happen 
to see a sheriff's officer arresting an honest gentle- 
man, who was doing no manner of harm to gentle or 
simple, and immediately afterwards a second sheriff's 
officer arresting the first — by which means that 
second officer merits for himself a place in history ; 
for at the same moment he liberates a deserving 
creature (since an arrested officer cannot possibly bag 
his prisoner), and he also avenges the insult put upon 
that worthy man? Perhaps the reader did not ever 
see such a sight ; and, growing personal, he asks me, 
in return, if / ever saw it. To say the truth, I never 
did ; except once, in a too-flattering dream ; and 
though I applauded so loudly as even to waken myself, 
and shouted ' encore,'' yet all went for nothing ; and I 
am still waiting for that splendid exemplification of 
retributive justice. But why ? Why should it be a 
spectacle so uncommon ? For surely those official 
arresters of men must want arresting at times as well 
as better people. At least, however, eii attendant one 
may luxuriate in the vision of such a thing ; and the 
reader shall now see such a vision rehearsed. He 
shall see Mr. Landor arresting Milton — Milton, of all 
men ! — for a flaw in his Roman erudition ; and then 
he shall see me instantly stepping up, tapping Mr. 
Landor on the shoulder, and saying, ' Officer, you're 
wanted ; ' whilst to Milton I say, touching my hat, 
'Now, sir, be off; run for your life, whilst I hold 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 215 

this man in custody, lest he should fasten on you 
again.' 

What Milton had said, speaking of the ' watchful 
cherubim,' was — 

' Four faces each 
Had, like a double Janus ; ' 

Upon which Southey — but, of course, Landor, ven- 
triloquizing through Southey — says, ' Better left this 
to the imagination : double Januses are queer figures.' 
Not at all. On the contrary, they became so common, 
that finally there were no other. Rome, in her days 
of childhood, contented herself with a two-faced 
Janus ; but, about the time of the first or second 
Csesar, a very ancient statue of Janus was exhumed, 
which had four faces. Ever afterwards, this sacred 
resurgent statue became the model for any possible 
Janus that could show himself in good company. The 
quadrifrons Janus was now the orthodox Janus ; and 
it would have been as much a sacrilege to rob him of 
any single face as to rob a king's statue * of its horse. 
One thing may recall this to Mr. Lander's memory. I 
think it was Nero, but certainly it was one of the first 
six Csesars, that built, or that finished, a magnificent 
temple to Janus ; and each face was so managed as 
to point down an avenue leading to a separate market- 
place. Now, that there were four market-places, I 

* A king^s statue : — Till very lately the etiquette of Europe 
was, that none but royal persons could have equestrian statues. 
Lord Hopetoun, the reader will object, is allowed to have a horse, 
in St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh. True, but observe that he 
is not allowed to mount him. The first person, so far as I re- 
member, that, not being royal, has, in our island, seated himself 
comfortably in the saddle, is the Duke of Wellington. 



216 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

will make oath before any Justice of the Peace. One 
was called the Forum Juliiim, one the Forum Angus- 
turn, a third the Forum Transit or iwn : what the 
fourth was called is best known to itself, for really I 
forget. But if anybody says that perhaps it was 
called the Forum Landoriu7n, I am not the man to 
object ; for few names have deserved such an honor 
more, whether from those that then looked forward into 
futurity with one face, or from our posterity that will 
look back into the vanishing past with another. 



FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 



I AM myself, and always have been, a member of 
the Church of England, and am grieved to hear the 
many attacks against the Church [frequently most 
illiberal attacks], which not so much religion as politi- 
cal rancor gives birth to in every third journal that I 
take up. This I say to acquit myself of all dishonor- 
able feelings, such as I would abhor to co-operate with, 
in bringing a very heavy charge against that great 
body in its literary capacity. Whosoever has reflected 
on the history of the English constitution — must be 
aware that the most important stage of its develop- 
ment lies within the reign of Charles I. It is true that 
the judicial execution of that prince has been allowed 
by many persons to vitiate all that was done by the 
heroic parliament of November, 1640 : and the ordi- 
nary histories of England assume as a matter of course 
that the whole period of parliamentary history through 
those times is to be regarded as a period of confusion. 
Our constitution, say they, was formed in 1688-9. 
Meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that the 
revolution simply re-aflirmed the principles developed 
in the strife between the two great parties which had 
arisen in the reign of James I., and had ripened and 
19 [217] 



218 FALSIFICATION OF 

come to issue with each other in the reign of his son. 
Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as 
they would represent it, but a gradual growth and 
development through a long tract of time. In par- 
ticular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsi- 
bility in the person of his ministers, which first gave 
a sane and salutary meaning to the doctrine of the 
king's personal irresponsibility [' The king can do no 
wrong'], arose undeniably between 1640 and 1648, 
This doctrine is the main pillar of our constitution, and 
perhaps the finest discovery that was ever made in the 
theory of government. Hitherto the doctrine that the 
King can do no wrong had been used not to protect 
the indispensable sanctity of the king's constitutional 
character, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way, 
it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for 
a nation where law had no empire. Many of the 
illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this ; 
and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to 
the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell 
into the opposite error of supposing that this abolition 
could be effected only by the direct negation of it; 
their maxim accordingly was — ' The king can do 
wrong,' i. e, is responsible in his own person. In this 
great error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchin- . 
son participated ; ^ and accordingly she taxes those of 
her own party who scrupled to accede to the new 
maxim, and still adhered to the old one, with uncon- 
scientious dealing. But she misapprehended their 
meaning, and failed to see where they laid the em- 
phasis : the emphasis was not laid, as it was by the 
royal party, on the words ' can do no wrorig ' — but 
on * The king : ' that is, wrong may be done ; and in 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 219 

the king's name ; but it cannot be the king who did it 
[the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the per- 
son who did it]. By this exquisite political refinement, 
the old tyrannical maxim was disarmed of its sting ; 
and the entire redress of all wrong, so indispensable to 
the popular liberty, was brought into perfect recon- 
ciliation with the entire inviolability of the sovereign, 
which is no less indispensable to the popular liberty. 
There is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense : 
for not only is one object [the redress of wrong] 
secured in conjunction with another object [the king's 
inviolability] hitherto held irreconcilable, — but even 
with a view to the first object alone a much more 
effectual means is applied, because one which leads to 
no schism in the state, than could have been applied 
by the blank negation of the maxim ; i. e. by lodging 
the responsibility exactly where the executive power 
[ergo the power of resisting this responsibility] was 
lodged. Here then is one example in illustration of 
my thesis — that the English constitution was in a 
great measure gradually evolved in the contest be- 
tween the different parties in the reign of Charles I. 
Now, if this be so, it follows that for constitutional 
history no period is so important as that : and indeed, 
though it is true that the Revolution is the great era 
for the constitutional historian, because he there first 
finds the constitution fully developed as the ' bright 
consummate flower,'' and what is equally important he 
there first finds the principles of our constitution 
ratified by a competent authority, — yet, to trace the 
root and growth of the constitution, the three reigns 
immediately preceding are still more properly the 
objects of his study. In proportion then as the reign 



220 FALSIFICiiTION OF 

of Charles I. is important to the history of our con- 
stitution, in that proportion are those to be taxed with 
the most dangerous of all possible falsifications of our 
history, who have misrepresented either the facts or 
the principles of those times. Now I afhrm that the 
clergy of the Church of England have been in a per- 
petual conspiracy since the era of the restoration to 
misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean 
I refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. 
Grey : for the proof I might refer to some thousands 
of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case : for he 
swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, 
the most extravagant that the malice of those times 
could invent against either the Presbyterians or the 
Independents: and for this I suppose amongst other 
deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by 
Warburton. But, amongst hundreds of illustrations 
more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer the 
reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical 
Biography [in part a republication of Walton's Lives] 
edited by the present master of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he 
is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious 
and as impartial as in such a case it is possible for a 
high churchman to be. Yet so it is that there is 
scarcely one of the notes having any political reference 
to the period of 1640- 1660, which is not disfigured 
by unjust prejudices : and the amount of the moral 
which the learned editor grounds upon the documents 
before him — is this, that the young student is to 
cherish the deepest abhorrence and contempt of all 
who had any share on the parliamentary side in the 
' confusions ' of the period from 1640 to 1660 : that is 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 221 

to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was 
owing that the very revolution of 1688, which Dr. W. 
will be the first to applaud, found us with any such 
stock of political principles or feelings as could make a 
beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask, 
would have been the willingness of some Tories to 
construe the flight of James II. into a virtual act of ab- 
dication, or to consider even the most formal act of 
abdication binding against the king, — had not the great 
struggle of Charles's days gradually substituted in the 
minds of all parties a rational veneration of the king's 
office for the old superstition in behalf of the king's 
person^ which would have protected him from the 
effects of any acts however solemnly performed which 
affected injuriously either his own interests or the 
liberties of his people. Tempera mutantur : nos et 
mutamur in illis. Those whom we find in fierce op- 
position to the popular party about 1640 we find still 
in the same personal opposition fifty years after, but 
an opposition resting on far different principles : in- 
sensibly the principles of their antagonists had reached 
even them : and a courtier of 1689 was willing to con- 
cede more than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured 
to ask. Let me not be understood to mean that true 
patriotism is at all more shown in supporting the rights 
of the people than those of the king : as soon as both 
are defined and limited, the last are as indispensable to 
the integrity of the constitution — as the first: and 
popular freedom itself would suffer as much, though 
indirectly, from an invasion of Cagsar's rights — as by 
a more direct attack on itself But in the 17th century 
the rights of the people were as yet not defined : 
throughout that century they were gradually defining 



222 FALSIFICATION OF 

themselves — and, as happiness to all great practical 
interests, defining themselves through a course of 
fierce and bloody contests. For the kingly rights 
are almost inevitably carried too high in ages of im- 
perfect civilization : and the well-known laws of Heniy 
the Seventh, by which he either broke or gradually 
sapped the power of the aristocracy, had still more 
extravagantly exalted them. On this account it is just 
to look upon democratic or popular politics as identical 
in the 17th century with patriotic politics. In later 
periods, the democrat and the patriot have sometimes 
been in direct opposition to each other : at that period 
they were inevitably in conjunction. All this, how- 
ever, is in general overlooked by those who either 
write English history or comment upon it. Most 
writers of or upon English history proceed either upon 
servile principles, or upon no principles : and a good 
Spirit of English History^ that is, a history which 
should abstract the tendencies and main results [as 
to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age 
of English history, is a work which I hardly hope 
to see executed. For it would require the con- 
currence of some philosophy, with a great deal of 
impartiality. How idly do we say, in speaking of the 
events of our own time which affect our party feel- 
ings, — 'We stand too near to these events for an 
impartial estimate : we must leave them to the judg- 
ment of posterity ! ' For it is a fact that of the many 
books of memoirs written by persons who were not 
merely contemporary with the great civil war, but 
actors and even leaders in its principal scenes — there 
is hardly one which does not exhibit a more impartial 
picture of that great drama than the histories written at 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 223 

this day. The historian of Popery does not display 
half so much zealotry and passionate prejudice in 
speaking of the many events which have affected the 
power and splendor of the Papal See for the last thirty 
years, and under his own eyes, as he does when 
speaking of a reformer who lived three centuries 
ago — of a translator of the Bible into a vernacular 
tongue who lived nearly five centuries ago — of an 
Anti-pope — of a Charlemagne or a Gregory the Great 
still further removed from himself. The recent events 
he looks upon as accidental and unessential: but in 
the great enemies, or great founders of the Romish 
temporal power, and in the history of their actions and 
their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the 
Romish cause and its pretensions are at stake. Pretty 
much under the same feeling have modern writers 
written with a rancorous party spirit of the political 
struggles in the 17th century : here they fancy that 
they can detect the incunabula of the revolutionary 
spirit : here some have been so sharpsighted as to read 
the features of pure jacobinism: and others ^ have 
gone so far as to assert that all the atrocities of the 
French revolution had their direct parallelisms in acts 
done or countenanced by the virtuous and august 
Senate of England in 1640 ! Strange distortion of the 
understanding which can thus find a brotherly resem- 
blance between two great historical events, which of 
all that ever were put on record stand off from each 
other in most irreconcilable enmity : the one originat- 
ing, as Mr. Coleridge has observed, in excess of prin- 
ciple ; the other in the utter defect of all moral principle 
whatever ; and the progress of each being answerable 
to its origin ! Yet so it is. And not a memoir-writer 



224 FALSIFICATION OF 

of that age is reprinted in this, but we have a preface 
from some red-hot Anti-jacobin warning us with much 
vapid common-place from the mischiefs and eventual 
anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in 
the French revolution — not by the example of that 
French revolution, but by that of our own in the age 
of Charles I. The following passage from the Intro- 
duction to Sir William Waller's Vindication published 
in 1793, may serve as a fair instance : ' He ' (Sir W. 
Waller) 'was, indeed, at length sensible of the misery 
which he had contributed to bring on his country ; ' 
(by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance — that Sir 
William^ first became sensible that his country was 
miserable, when he became sensible that he himself 
was not likely to be again employed ; and became 
fully convinced of it, when his party lost their as- 
cendancy :) ' he was convinced, by fatal experience, 
that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect govern- 
ment ; that the subversion of every establishment was 
no safe foundation for a permanent and regular consti- 
tution : he found that pretences of reform were held 
up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of the unwary, 
&c. ; he found in short that reformation, by popular 
insurrection, must end in the destruction and cannot 
tend to the formation of a regular Government.' After 
a good deal more of this well-meaning cant, the Intro 
duction concludes with the following sentence: — the 
writer is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongst 
whom — ' both leaders and followers,' he says, ' may 
together reflect — that, upon speculative and visionary 
reformers,' (i. e. those of 1640) ' the severest punish- 
ment which God in his vengeance ever yet inflicted — 
was to curse them with the complete gratification of 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 225 

their own inordinate desires.' I quote this passage — 
not as containing any thing singular, but for the very 
reason that it is not singular : it expresses in fact the 
universal opinion : notwithstanding which I am happy 
to say that it is false. What 'complete gratification 
of their own desires' was ever granted to the 're- 
formers' in question? On the contrary, it is well 
known (and no book illustrates that particular fact so 
well as Sir William Waller's) that as early as 1647 
the army had too effectually subverted the just rela- 
tions between itself and parliament — not to have 
suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning patriots 
of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their 
prospects. And, when I speak of an ' unhappy issue,' 
I would be understood only of the immediate issue : 
for the remote issue was — the revolution of 1688, as 
I have already asserted. Neither is it true that even 
the immediate issue was ' unhappy ' to any extent 
which can justify the ordinary language in which it is 
described. Here again is a world of delusions. We 
hear of ' anarchy,' of ' confusions,' of ' proscriptions,' 
of ' bloody and ferocious tyranny.' All is romance ; 
there was no anarchy; no confusions; no proscrip- 
tions; no tyranny in the sense designed. The se- 
questrations, forfeitures, and punishments of all sorts 
which were inflicted by the conquering party on their 
antagonists — went on by due course of law ; and the 
summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to 
in England: except for the short term of the two 
wars, and the brief intermediate campaign of 1648, 
the country was in a very tranquil state. Nobody was 
punished without an open trial ; and all trials pro- 
ceeded in the regular course, according to the ancient 



226 FALSIFICATION OF 

/ 

forms, and in the regular courts of justice. And as to 
' tyranny,' which is meant chiefly of the acts of Crom- 
well's government, it should be remembered that the 
Protectorate lasted not a quarter of the period in 
question (1640-1660); a fact which is constantly 
forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak as 
though Cromwell had drawn his sword in January, 
1649 — cut off the king's head — instantly mounted 
his throne — and continued to play the tyrant for the 
whole remaining period of his life (nearly ten years). 
Secondly, as to the kind of tyranny which Cromwell 
exercised, the misconception is ludicrous : continental 
writers have a notion, well justified by the language 
of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious 
savage who built his palace of human skulls and deso- 
lated his country. Meantime, he was simply a strong- 
minded — rough-built Englishman, with a character 
thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. 
Gray valued himself upon his critical knowledge of 
English history : yet how thoughtlessly does he ex- 
press the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the 
village Cromwell — 'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his 
country's blood 1 ' How was Cromwell guilty of his 
country's blood ? What blood did he cause to be shed } 
A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, 
by the way, than is imagined) : but in those Cromwell 
was but a servant of the parliament : and no one will 
allege that he had any hand in causing a single war. 
After he attained the sovereign power, no more do- 
mestic wars arose : and as to a few persons who were 
executed for plots and conspiracies against his person, 
they were condemned upon evidence openly given and 
by due course of law. With respect to the general 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 227 

character of his government, it is evident that in the 
unsettled and revohitionary state of things which fol- 
lows a civil war some critical cases will arise to de- 
mand an occasional ' vigor beyond the law ' — such as 
the Roman government allowed of in the dictatorial 
power. But in general, Cromwell's government was 
limited by law : and no reign in that century, prior to 
the revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to 
tamper with the laws — to overrule them — to twist 
them to private interpretations — or to dispense with 
them. As to his major-generals of counties, who 
figure in most histories of England as so many AH 
Pachas that impaled a few prisoners every morning 
before breakfast — or rather as so many ogres that ate 
up good christian men, women and children alive, 
ihey were disagreeable people who were disliked much 
in the same way as our commissioners of the income- 
tax were disliked in the memory of us all ; and heartily 
they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody 
masquerade in which they are made to figure in the 
English histories. What then was the * tyranny ' of 
Cromwell's government, which is confessedly com- 
plained of even in those days ? The word ' tyranny ' 
was then applied not so much to the mode in which 
his power was administered (except by the pre- 
judiced) — as to its origin. However mercifully a 
man may reign, — yet, if he have no right to reign at 
all, we may in one sense call him a tyrant ; his power 
not being justly derived, and resting upon an unlawful 
(i. e. a military) basis. As a usurper, and one who 
had diverted the current of a grand national movement 
to selfish and personal objects, Cromwell was and will 
be called a tyrant ; but not in the more obvious sense 



228 FALSIFICATION OF 

of the word. Such are the misleading statements 
which disfigure the History of England in its most im- 
portant chapter. They mislead by more tlian a simple 
error of fact : those, which I have noticed last, involve 
a moral anachronism ; for they convey images of 
cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist with 
the national civilization at that time ; and whosoever 
has not corrected this false picture by an acquaintance 
with the English literature of that age, must neces- 
sarily image to himself a state of society as rude and 
uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of 
York and Lancaster — i. e. about two centuries earlier. 
But those, with which I introduced this article, are 
still worse ; because they involve an erroneous view 
of constitutional history, and a most comprehensive 
act of ingratitude : the great men of the Long Parlia- 
ment paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase 
for their descendants a barrier to irresponsible power 
and security from the anarchy of undefined regal pre- 
rogative : in these efforts most of them made ship- 
wreck of their own tranquillity and peace ; that such 
sacrifices were made unavailingly (as it must have 
seemed to themselves), and that few of them lived to 
see the ' good old cause ' finally triumphant, does not 
cancel their claims upon our gratitude — but rather 
strengthen them by the degree in which it aggravated 
the diflSculty of bearing such sacrifices with patience. 
But whence come these falsifications of history ? I 
believe, from two causes ; first (as I have already said) 
from the erroneous tone impressed upon the national 
history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the 
established church : to the religious zealotry of those 
times — the church was the object of especial attack ; 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 229 

and its members were naturally exposed to heavy suf- 
ferings : hence their successors are indisposed to find 
any good in a cause which could lead to such a result. 
It is their manifest right to sympathize with their own 
order in that day ; and in such a case it is almost their 
duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality. Mean- 
time they have carried this much too far : the literature 
of England must always be in a considerable pro- 
portion lodged in their hands ; and the extensive 
means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously 
coloring that important part of history they have used 
with no modesty or forbearance. There is not a page 
of the national history even in its local subdivisions 
which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue 
of their Avounded remembrances : hardly a town in 
England, which stood a siege for the king or the par- 
liament, but has some printed memorial of its con- 
stancy and its sufferings ; and in nine cases out of ten 
the editor is a clergyman of the established church, 
who has contrived to deepen ' the sorrow of the time ' 
by the harshness of his commentary. Surely it is 
high time that the wounds of the 17th century should 
close ; that history should take a more commanding 
and philosophic station ; and that brotherly charity 
should now lead us to a saner view of constitutional 
politics ; or a saner view of politics to a more compre- 
hensive charity. The other cause of this falsification 
springs out of a selfishness which has less claim to 
any indulgence — viz. the timidity with which the 
English Whigs of former days and the party to whom 
they 4 succeeded, constantly shrank from acknowledg- 
ing any alliance with the great men of the Long Par- 
liament under the nervous horror of being confounded 



230 FALSIFICATION OF 

with the regicides of 1649. It was of such urgent 
importance to them, for any command over the public 
support, that they should acquit themselves of any 
sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which 
their enemies never failed to load them, that no rnode 
of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them : 
hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest 
of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer 
a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow : 
hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have 
insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless 
irreverence as the Whigs ; though it is true that some 
few Whigs, more however in their literary than in 
their political character, have stepped forward in his 
vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in 
the writings of a modern Whig bishop — in which, for 
the sake of creating a charge of falsehood against 
Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage 
in the Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano : and, if that 
bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty 
of rapping his knuckles — were it only for breaking 
Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud 
against the Long Parliament, — it was a passage in 
a very pleasing work of this day (Ecclesiastical Bi- 
ography) which suggested to me the whole of what I 
have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable 
of uncandid feelings except in what concerns the in- 
terests of his order, has adopted the usual tone in 
refijard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise 
valuable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the 
Life of Hammond, according to my remembrance) he 
has made a statement to this effect — That the custom 
prevalent among children in that age of asking their 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 231 

parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse 
by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity 
of prejudice more unreasonable ? The unamiable side 
of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century 
was unquestionably its religious bigotry ; which, how- 
ever, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling 
and a real strength of religious principle somewhat 
exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century. 
But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be de- 
nied ; it was often offensive from its excess ; and 
ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless customs, 
many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive 
value, their frantic intolerance quarrelled with : and 
for my part I heartily join in the sentiment of Charles 
II. — applying it as he did, but a good deal more ex- 
tensively, that their religion ' was not a religion for a 
gentleman : ' indeed all sectarianism, but especially 
that which has a modern origin — arising and growing 
up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand 
traditional history of persecutions — conflicts — and 
martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys, holes, 
corners, and tabernacles, must appear spurious and 
mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the 
grand classic forms of the Church of England or the 
Church of Rome. But, because the bigotry of the 
Puritans was excessive and revolting, is that a reason 
for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission 
or commission for which no distinct fathers can be 
found ? The learned editor does not pretend that 
there is any positive evidence, or presumption even, 
for imputing to the Puritans a dislike to the custom in 
question : but, because he thinks it a good custom, his 
inference is that nobody could have abolished it but 



232 FALSIFICATION OF 

the Puritans. Now who does not see that, if this had 
been amongst the usages discountenanced by the Pu- 
ritans, it would on that account have been the more 
pertinaciously maintained by their enemies in church 
and state ? Or, even if this usage were of a nature to 
be prohibited by authority, as the public use of the 
liturgy — organs — surplices, &c., who does not see 
that with regard to that as well as to other Puritanical 
innovations there would have been a reflux of zeal at 
the restoration of the king which would have estab- 
lished them in more strength than ever ? But it is 
evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in question 
gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit 
of the times. It was one feature of a general system, 
of manners, fitted by its piety and simplicity for a 
pious and simple age, and which therefore even the 
17th century had already outgrown. It is not to be 
inferred that filial affection and reverence have de- 
cayed amongst us, because they no longer express 
themselves in the same way. In an age of imperfect 
culture, all passions and emotions are in a more ele- 
mentary state — ' speak a plainer language ' — and 
express themselves externally : in such an age the 
frame and constitution of society is more picturesque ; 
the modes of life rest more undisguisedly upon the 
basis of the absolute and original relation of things : 
the son is considered in his sonship, the father in his 
fatherhood : and the manners take an appropriate 
coloring. Up to the middle of the 17th century there 
were many families in which the children never pre- 
sumed to sit down in their parents' presence. But with 
us, in an age of more complete intellectual culture, a 
thick disguise is spread over the naked foundations of 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 233 

human life ; and the instincts of good taste banish 
from good company the expression of all the pro- 
founder emotions. A son therefore, who should kneel 
down in this age to ask his papa's blessing on leaving 
town for Brighton or Bath — would be felt by himself 
to be making a theatrical display of filial duty, such 
as would be painful to him in proportion as his feel- 
ings were sincere. All this would have been evident 
to the learned editor in any case but one which re- 
garded the Puritans : they were at any rate to be 
molested : in default of any graver matter, a mere 
fanciful grievance is searched out. Still, however, 
nothing was effected ; fanciful or real, the grievance 
must be connected with the Puritans : here lies the 
offence, there lies the Puritans : it would be very 
agreeable to find some means of connecting the one 
with the other : but how shall this be done ? Why, in 
default of all other means, the learned editor assumes 
the connection. He leaves the reader with an im- 
pression that the Puritans are chargeable with a serious 
wound to the manners of the nation in a point affecting 
the most awful of the household charities : and he fails 
to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground 
is — that it would be very agreeable to him if he had 
a ground. Such is the power of the esprit de corps to 
palliate and recommend as colorable the very weakest 
logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent ! 
— In conclusion I must again disclaim any want of 
veneration and entire affection for the Established 
Church : the very prejudices and injustice, with which 
I tax the English clergy, have a generous origin : but 
it is right to point the attention of historical students to 
their strength and the effect which they have had. 
20 



234 FALSIFICATION OF 

They have been indulged to excess ; they have dis- 
figured the grandest page in English history ; they 
have hid the true descent and tradition of our constitu- 
tional history ; and, by impressing upon the literature 
of the country a false conception of the patriotic party 
in and out of Parliament, they have stood in the way 
of a great work, — a work which, according to my 
ideal of it, would be the most useful that could just 
now be dedicated to the English public — viz. a philo- 
sophic record of the revolutions of English History, 
The English Constitution, as proclaimed and ratified 
in ' 1688 - 9, is in its kind, the noblest work of the 
human mind working in conjunction with Time, and 
what in such a case we may allowably call Provi- 
dence. Of this chefd''(Buvre of human wisdom it were 
desirable that we should have a proportionable his- 
tory : for such a history the great positive qualification 
would be a philosophic mind : the great negative 
qualification would be this [which to the established 
clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for 
their magnanimity] ; viz. complete conquest over those 
prejudices which have hitherto discolored the greatest 
era of patriotic virtue by contemplating the great men 
of that era under their least happy aspect — namely, in 
relation to the Established Church. 

Now that I am on the subject of English History, I 
will notice one of the thousand mis-statements of 
Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the 
stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner 
and situation in which he has introduced it. Standing 
in the current of a narrative, it would have merited a 
silent correction in an unpretending note : but it occu- 
pies a much more assuming station ; for it is intro- 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 235 

duced ill a philosophical essay ; and being relied on 
for a particular purpose with the most unqualified 
confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the veiy 
highest authority [viz. the authority of an eminent 
person contemporary with the fact] it must be looked 
on as involving a peremptory defiance to all succeed- 
ing critics who might hesitate between the authority 
of Mr. Hume at the distance of a century from the 
facts and Sir William Temple speaking to them as a 
matter within his personal recollections. Sir William 
Temple had represented himself as urging in a con- 
versation with Charles 11. , the hopelessness of any 
attempt on the part of an English king to make him- 
self a despotic and absolute monarch, except indeed 
through the affections of his people.^ This general 
thesis he had supported by a variety of arguments; 
and, amongst the rest, he had described himself as 
urging this — that even Cromwell had been unable to 
establish himself in unlimited power, though supported 
by a military force of eighty thousand men. Upon 
this Hume calls the reader's attention to the extreme 
improbability which there must beforehand appear to 
be in supposing that Sir W. Temple, — speaking of so 
recent a case, with so much official knowledge of that 
case at his command, uncontradicted moreover by the 
king whose side in the argument gave him an interest 
in contradicting Sir William's statement, and whose 
means of information were paramount to those of all 
others, — ct)uld under these circumstances be mis- 
taken. Doubtless, the reader will reply to Mr. Hume, 
the improbability is extreme, and scarcely to be in- 
validated by any possible authority — which, at best, 
must terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing 



236 FALSIFICATION OF 

evidence. And yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir William was 
unquestionably wrong, and grossly wrong: Cromwell 
never had an army at all approaching to the number 
of eighty thousand. Now here is a sufficient proof 
that Hume had never read Lord Clarendon's account 
of his own life : this book is not so common as his 
' History of the Rebellion ; ' and Hume had either not 
met with it, or had neglected it. For, in the early 
part of this work, Lord Clarendon, speaking of the 
army which was assembled on Blackheath to welcome 
the return of Charles II., says that it amounted to fifty 
thousand men : and, when it is remembered that this 
army was exclusive of the troops in garrison — of the 
forces left by Monk in the North — and above all of 
the entire army in Ireland, — it cannot be doubted that 
the whole would amount to the number stated by Sir 
William Temple. Indeed Charles II. himself, in the 
year 1678 [i. e. about four years after this conversa- 
tion] as Sir W. Temple elsewhere tells us, ' in six 
weeks' time raised an army of twenty thousand men, 
the completest — and in all appearance the bravest 
troops that could be any where seen, and might have 
raised many more ; and it was confessed by all the 
Foreign Ministers that no kino; in Christendom could 
have made and completed such a levy as this ap- 
peared in such a time.' William III. again, about 
eleven years afterwards, raised twenty-three regiments 
with the same ease and in the same space of six 
weeks. It may be objected indeed to such cases, as 
in fact it was objected to the case of William III. by 
Hewlett in his sensible Examination of Dr. Price's 
Essay on the Population of England, that, in an age 
when manufactures were so little extended, it could 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 237 

never have been difficult to make such a levy of men — 
provided there were funds for paying and equipping 
them. But, considering the extraordinary funds which 
were disposable for this purpose in Ireland, &c. during 
the period of Crom well's Protectorate, we may very 
safely allow the combined authority of Sir William 
Temple — of the king — and of that very prime 
minister who disbanded Cromwell's army, to outweigh 
the single authority of Hume at the distance of a cen- 
tury from the facts. Upon any question of fact, indeed, 
Hume's authority is none at all. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 218. 

This is remarked by her editor and descendant Julius Hutoh- 
inson, who adds some words to this effect — ' that if the patriots 
of that day were the inventors of the maxim [ The king can do 
no wrong'] , we are much indebted to them. ' The patriots cer- 
tainly did not invent the maxim, for they found it already cur- 
rent : but they gave it its ncAV and constitutional sense. I refer to 
the book, however, as I do to almost all books in these notes, from 
memory ; writing most of them in situations where I have no 
access to books. By the way, Charles I., who used the maxim in 
the most odious sense, furnished the most colorable excuse for 
his own execution. He constantly maintained the irresponsi- 
bility of his ministers : but, if that were conceded, it would then 
follow that the king must be made responsible in his own 
person : — and that construction led of necessity to his trial and 
death. 



Note 2. Page 223. 

Amongst these Mr. D 'Israeli in one of the latter volumes of 
his ' Curiosities of Literature ' has dedicated a chapter or so to a 
formal proof of this proposition. A reader who is familiar with 
the history of that age comes to the chapter with a previous in- 
dignation, knowing what sort of proof he has to expect. This 
indignation is not likely to be mitigated by what he will there 
find. Because some one madman, fool, or scoundrel makes a 
monstrous proposal — which dies of itself unsupported, and iain 
violent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those times, — 
[238] 



NOTES. 239 

this is to sally the character of the parliament and three-fourths 
of the people of England. If this proposal had grown out of the 
spirit of the age, that spirit would have produced many more 
proposals of the same character and acts corresponding to them. 
Yet upon.this one infamous proposal, and two or three scandalous 
anecdotes from the libels of the day, does the whole onus of Mr. 
©'Israeli's parallel depend. Tantamne rem tam negligenterl — 
In the general character of an Englishman I have a right to 
complain that so heavy an attack upon the honor of England and 
her most virtuous pati-iots in her most virtuous age should be 
made with so much levity : a charge so solemn in its matter' 
should have been prosecuted with a proportionate solemnity of 
manner. Mr. D 'Israeli refers with just applause to the opinions 
of Mr, Coleridge : I wish that he would have allowed a little 
more weight to the sti-iking passage in which that gentleman 
contrasts the French revolution with the English revolution of 
1640-8. However, the general tone of honor and upright prin- 
ciple, which marks Mr. D 'Israeli's work, encourages me and 
others to hope that he will cancel the chapter — and not persist 
in wounding the honor of a great people for the sake of a paral 
lelism, which — even if it were true — is a thousand times too 
slight and feebly supported to satisfy the most accommodating 
reader. 

Note 3. Page 224. 

Sir William and his cousin Sir Hardress Waller, were both 
remarkable men. Sir Hardress had no conscience at all ; Sir 
William a very scrupulous one ; which, however, he was for ever 
tampering with — and generally succeeded in reducing into 
compliance with his immediate interest. He was, however, an 
accomplished gentleman : and as a man of talents worthy of the 
highest admiration. 

Note 4. Page 229. 

Until after the year 1688, I do not remember ever to have 
found the term Whig applied except to the religious character- 
istics of that party : whatever reference it might have to their 
political distinctions was only secondary and by implication. 



240 



Note 5. Page 235. 



Sir William had quoted to Charles a saying from Gourville (a 
Frenchman whom the king esteemed, and whom Sir William 
himself considered the only foreigner he had ever known that 
understood England) to this effect : ' That a king of England, 
who will be the man of his people, is the greatest king in 
the world ; but, if he will be something more, by G — he is 
nothing at all.' 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

He was a man of very extraordinary genius. He 
has generally been treated by those who have spokeB 
of him in print as a madman. But this is a mistake 
and must have been founded chiefly on the titles oi 
his books. He was a man of fervid mind and of sub 
lime aspirations : but he was no madman ; or, if he 
was, then I say that it is so far desirable to be a mad- 
man. In 1798 or 1799, when I must have been about 
thirteen years old, Walking Stewart was in Bath — 
where my family at that time resided. He frequented 
the pump-room, and I believe all public places — 
walking up and down, and dispersing his philosophic 
opinions to the right and the left, like a Grecian philos- 
opher. The first time I saw him was at a concert in 
the Upper Rooms ; he was pointed out to me by one 
of my party as a very eccentric man who had walked 
over the habitable globe. I remember that Madame 
Mara was at that moment singing : and Walking 
Stewart, who was a true lover of music (as 1 after- 
wards came to know), was hanging upon her notes 
like a bee upon a jessamine flower. His countenance 
was striking, and expressed the union of benignity 
with philosophic habits of thought. In such health 
had his pedestrian exercises preserved him, connected 
21 [2411 



242 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

With his abstemious mode of living, that though he 
must at that time have been considerably above forty, 
he did not look older than twenty-eight ; at least the 
face which remained upon my recollection for some 
years was that of a young man. Nearly ten years 
afterwards I became acquainted with him. During 
the interval I had picked up one of his works in 
Bristol, — viz. his Travels to discover the Source of 
Moral Motion^ the second volume of which is entitled 
The Apocalypse of Nature. I had been greatly im- 
pressed by the sound and original views which in the 
first volume he had taken of the national characters 
throughout Europe. In particular he was the first, 
and so far as I know the only writer who had noticed 
the profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character 
to the English nation. ' English phlegm ' is the con- 
stant expression of authors when contrasting the English 
with the French. Now the truth is, that, beyond that 
of all other nations, it has a substratum of profound 
passion : and, if we are to recur to the old doctrine of 
temperaments, the English character must be classed 
not under the phlegmatic but under the melancholic 
temperament; and the French under the sanguine. 
The character of a nation may be judged of in this 
particular by examining its idiomatic language. The 
French, in whom the lower forms of passion are con- 
stantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial 
character of their feelings, have appropriated all the 
phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordi- 
nary life : and hence they have no language of passion 
for the service of poetry or of occasions really de- 
manding it : for it has been already enfeebled by 
continual association with cases of an unimpassioned 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 243 

order. But a character of deeper passion has a per- 
petual standard in itself, by which as by an instinct it 
tries all cases, and rejects the language of passion as 
disproportionate and ludicrous where it is not fully 
justified. ' Ah Heavens ! ' or ' Oh my God ! ' are 
exclamations with us so exclusively reserved for cases 
of profound interest, — that on hearing a woman even 
(i. e. a person of the sex most easily excited) utter 
such words, we look round expecting to see her child 
in some situation of danger. But, in France, ' Ciel ! ' 
and ' Oh mon Dieu ! ' are uttered by every woman if a 
mouse does but run across the floor. The ignorant 
and the thoughtless, however, will continue to class the 
English character under the phlegmatic temperament, 
whilst the philosopher will perceive that it is the exact 
polar antithesis to a phlegmatic character. In this 
conclusion, though otherwise expressed and illustrated. 
Walking Stewart's view of the English character will 
be found to terminate : and his opinion is especially 
valuable — first and chiefly, because he was a philoso- 
pher ; secondly, because his acquaintance with man 
civilized and uncivilized, under all national distinctions, 
was absolutely unrivalled. Meantime, this and others 
of his opinions were expressed in language that if 
literally construed would often appear insane or absurd. 
The truth is, his long intercourse with foreign nations 
had given something of a hybrid tincture to hi's diction ; 
in some of his works, for instance, he uses the French 
word helas ! uniformly for the English alas ! and 
apparently with no consciousness of his mistake. He 
had also this singularity about him — that he was 
everlastingly metaphysicizing against metaphysics. To 
me, who was buried in metaphysical reveries from my 



244 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

earliest days, this was not likely to be an attraction , 
any more than the vicious structure of his diction was 
likely to please my scholarlike taste. All grounds of 
disgust, however, gave way before my sense of his 
powerful merits ; and, as I have said, I sought his 
acquaintance. Coming up to London from Oxford 
about 1807 or 1808 I made inquiries about him ; and 
found that he usually read the papers at a coffee-room 
in Piccadilly : understanding that he was poor, it struck 
me that he might not wish to receive visits at hi? 
lodgings, and therefore I sought him at the coffee- 
room. Here I took the liberty of introducing myself 
to him. He received me courteously, and invited me 
to his rooms — which at that time were in Sherrard- 
street, Golden-square — a street already memorable to 
me. I was much struck with the eloquence of his 
conversation ; and afterwards I found that Mr. Words- 
worth, himself the most eloquent of men in conversa- 
tion, had been equally struck when he had met him at 
Paris between the years 1790 and 1792, during the 
early storms of the French revolution. In Sherrard- 
street I visited him repeatedly, and took notes of the 
conversations I had with him on various subjects. 
These I must have somewhere or other ; and I wish I 
could introduce them here, as they would interest the 
reader. Occasionally in these conversations, as in his 
books, he introduced a few notices of his private 
history : in particular I remember his telling me that 
in the East Indies he had been a prisoner of Hyder's : 
that he had escaped with some difficulty ; and that, in 
the service of one of the native princes as secretary or 
interpreter, he had accumulated a small fortune. This 
must have been too small, I fear, at that time to allow 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 245 

him even a philosopher's comforts : for some part of 
it, invested in the French funds, had been confiscated. 
I was grieved to see a man of so much ability, of 
gentlemanly manners, and refined habits, and with the 
infirmity of deafness, sufiering under such obvious 
privations ; and I once took the liberty, on a fit occa- 
sion presenting itself, of requesting that he would 
allow me to send him some books which he had been 
casually regretting that he did not possess ; for I was 
at that time in the hey-day of my worldly prosperity. 
This oflTer, however, he declined with firmness and 
dignity, though not unkindly. And I now mention it, 
because I have seen him charged in print with a selfish 
regard to his own pecuniary interest. On the contrary, 
he appeared to me a very liberal and generous man : 
and I well remember that, whilst he refused to accept 
of any thing from me, he compelled me to receive as 
presents all the books which he published during my 
acquaintance with him : two of these, corrected with 
his own hand, viz. the Lyre of Apollo and the Sophi- 
ometer, I have lately found amongst other books left in 
London ; and others he forwarded to me in Westmore- 
land. In 1809 I saw him often : in the spring of that 
year, I happened to be in London ; and Mr. Words- 
worth's tract on the Convention of Cintra being at that 
time in the printer's hands, I superintended the pub- 
lication of it ; and, at Mr. Wordsworth's request, I 
added a long note on Spanish affairs which is printed 
in the Appendix. The opinions I expressed in this 
note on the Spanish character at that time much 
calumniated, on the retreat to Corunna then fresh in 
the public mind, above all, the contempt I expressed 
for the superstition in respect to the French military 



246 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

prowess which was then universal and at its height, 
and which gave way u) facr. only to the campaigns of 
1814 and 1815, fell in, as it happened, with Mr. 
Stewart's political creed in those points where at that 
time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was, I 
think, that I saw him for the last time : and by the 
way, on the day of my parting with him, I had an 
amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of 
ubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the 
London Magazine : I met him and shook hands with 
him under Somerset-house, telling him that I should 
leave town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I 
went by the very shortest road (i. e. through Moor- 
street, Soho — for I am learned in many quarters of 
London) towards a point which necessarily led me 
through Tottenham-court-road : I stopped nowhere, 
and walked fast : yet so it was that in Tottenham- 
court-road I was not overtaken by {that was compre- 
prehensible), but overtook, Walking Stewart. Cer- 
tainly, as the above writer alleges, there must have 
been three Walking Stewarts in London. He seemed 
no ways surprised at this himself, but explained to me 
that somewhere or other in the neighborhood of Tot- 
tenham-court-road there was a little theatre, at which 
there was dancing and occasionally good singing, be- 
tween which and a neighboring coffee-house he some- 
times divided his evenings. Singing, it seems, he 
could hear in spite of his deafness. In this street I 
took my final leave of him ; it turned out such ; and, 
anticipating at the time that it would be so^ I looked 
after his white hat at the moment it was disappearing 
and exclaimed — ' Farewell, thou half-crazy and most 
eloquent man ! I shall never see thy face again.' I 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 247 

did not intend, at that moment, to visit London again 
for some years : as it happened, I was there for a 
short time in 1814: and then I heard, to my great 
satisfaction, that Walking Stewart had recovered a 
considerable sum (about <£ 14,000 I believe) from the 
East India Company ; and from the abstract given in 
the London Magazine of the Memoir by his relation, I 
have since learned that he applied this money most 
wisely to. the purchase of an annuity, and that he 
'persisted in living' too long for the peace of an 
annuity office. So fare all companies East and West, 
and all annuity offices, that stand opposed in interest 
to philosophers ! In 1814, however, to my great re- 
gret, I did not see him ; for I was then taking a great 
deal of opium, and never could contrive to issue to the 
light of day soon enough for a morning call upon a 
philosopher of such early hours ; and in the evening I 
concluded that he would be generally abroad, from 
what he had formerly communicated to me of his own 
habits. It seems, however, that he afterwards held 
conversaziones at his own rooms ; and did not stir out 
to theatres quite so much. From a brother of mine, 
who at one time occupied rooms in the same house 
with him, 1 learned that in other respects he did not 
deviate in his prosperity from the philosophic tenor of 
his former life. He abated nothing of his peripatetic 
exercises ; and repaired duly in the morning, as he 
had done in former years, to St. James's Park, — 
where he sate in contemplative ease amongst the 
cows, inhaling their balmy breath and pursuing his 
philosophic reveries. He had also purchased an organ, 
or more than one, with which he solaced his solitude 
and beguiled himself of uneasy thoughts if he ever 
had any. 



248 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

The works of Walking Stewart must be read with 
some indulgence ; the titles are generally too lofty and 
pretending and somewhat extravagant; the compo- 
sition is lax and unprecise, as I have before said ; and 
the doctrines are occasionally very bold, incautiously 
stated, and too hardy and high-toned for the nervous 
effeminacy of many modern moralists. But Walking 
Stewart was a man who thought nobly of human 
nature : he wrote therefore at times in the spirit and 
with the indignation of an ancient prophet against the 
oppressors and destroyers of the time. In particular I 
remember that in one or more of the pamphlets which 
I received from him at Grasmere he expressed himself 
in such terms on the subject of Tyrannicide (dis- 
tinguishing the cases in which it was and was not 
lawful) as seemed to Mr. Wordsworth and myself 
every way worthy of a philosopher; but, from the 
way in which that subject was treated in the House of 
Commons, where it was at that time occasionally in- 
troduced, it was plain that his doctrine was not fitted 
for the luxurious and relaxed morals of the age. Like 
all men who think nobly of human nature. Walking 
Stewart thought of it hopefully. In some respects his 
hopes were wisely grounded ; in others they rested too 
much upon certain metaphysical speculations which 
are untenable, and which satisfied himself only be- 
cause his researches in that track had been purely 
self-originated and self-disciplined. He relied upon 
his own native strength of mind ; but in questions, 
which the wisdom and philosophy of every age build- 
ing successively upon each other have not been able 
to settle, no mind, however strong, is entitled to build 
wholly upon itself. In many things he shocked the 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 249 

religious sense — especially as it exists in unphilosophic 
minds ; he held a sort of rude and unscientific Spinos- 
ism ; and he expressed it coarsely and in the way 
most likely to give offence. And indeed there can be 
no stronger proof of the utter obscurity in which his 
works have slumbered than that they should all have 
escaped prosecution. He also allowed himself to look 
too lightly and indulgently on the afflicting spectacle 
of female prostitution as it exists in London and in all 
great cities. This was the only point on which I was 
disposed to quarrel with him ; for I could not but view 
it as a greater reproach to human nature than the 
slave-trade or any sight of wretchedness that the sun 
looks down upon. I often told him so ; and that I was 
at a loss to guess how a philosopher could allow him- 
self to view it simply as part of the equipage of civil 
life, and as reasonably making part of the establish- 
ment and furniture of a great city as police-offlces, 
lamp-lighting, or newspapers. Waiving however this 
one instance of something like compliance with the 
brutal spirit of the world, on all other subjects he was 
eminently unworldly, child-like, simple-minded, and 
upright. He would flatter no man : even when ad- 
dressing nations, it is almost laughable to see how 
invariably he prefaces his counsels with such plain 
truths uttered in a manner so offensive as must have 
defeated his purpose if it had otherwise any chance 
of being accomplished. For instance, in addressing 
America, he begins thus : — ' People of America ! 
since your separation from the mother-country your 
moral character has degenerated in the energy of 
thought and sense ; produced by the absence of your 
association and intercourse with British officers and 



250 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

merchants : you have no moral discernment to dis- 
tinguish between the protective power of England and 
the destructive power of France.' And his letter to 
the Irish nation opens in this agreeable and conciliatoiy 
manner: — 'People of Ireland! I address you as a 
true philosopher of nature, foreseeing the perpetual 
misery your irreflective character and total absence 
of moral discernment are preparing for' &c. The 
second sentence begins thus — ' You are sacrilegiously 
arresting the arm of your parent kingdom fighting the 
cause of man and nature, when the triumph of the 
fiend of French police-terror would be your own 
instant extirpation — .' And the letter closes thus : — 
' I see but one awful alternative — that Ireland will be 
a perpetual moral volcano, threatening the destruction 
of the world, if the education and instruction of thought 
and sense shall not be able to generate the faculty of 
moral discernment among a very numerous class of 
the population, who detest the civic calm as sailors the 
natural calm — and make civic rights on which they 
cannot reason a pretext for feuds which they delight 
in.' As he spoke freely and boldly to others, so he 
spoke loftily of himself: at p. 313, of ' The Harp of 
Apollo,' on making a comparison of himself with 
Socrates (in which he naturally gives the preference 
to himself) he styles 'The Harp,' &c. 'this un- 
paralleled work of human energy.' At p. 315, he 
calls it ' this stupendous work ; ' and lower down on 
the same page he says — 'I was turned out of school 
at the age of fifteen for a dunce or blockhead, because 
I would not stuff into my memory all the nonsense of 
erudition and learning ; and if future ages should dis- 
cover the unparalleled energies of genius in this work, 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 251 

it will prove my most important doctrine — that the 
powers of the human mind must be developed in the 
education of thought and sense in the study of moral 
opinion, not arts and science.' Again, at p. 225 of 
his Sophiometer, he says: — 'The paramount thought 
that dwells in my mind incessantly is a question I 
put to myself — whether, in the event of my personal 
dissolution by death, I have communicated all the 
discoveries my unique mind possesses in the great 
master-science of man and nature.' In the next page 
he determines that he has, with the exception of one 
truth, — viz. 'the latent energy, physical and moral, 
of human nature as existing in the British people.' 
But here he was surely accusing himself without 
ground : for to my knowledge he has not failed in any 
one of his numerous works to insist upon this theme 
at least a billion of times. Another instance of his 
magnificent self-estimation is — that in the title pages 
of several of his works he announces himself as ' John 
Stewart, the only man of nature * that ever appeared 
in the world.' 

By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect 
that he was crazy : and certainly, when I consider 
every thing, he must have been crazy when the wind 
was at NNE ; for who but Walking Stewart ever 
dated his books by a computation drawn — not from 
the creation, not from the flood, not from Nabonassar, 
or ah urhe conditd, not from the Hegira — but from 

* In Bath he was surnamed ' the Child of Nature ; ' — which 
arose from his contrasting on every occasion the existing man 
of our present experience with the ideal or Stewartian man that 
might be expected to emerge in some myriads of ages ; to which 
latter man he gave the name of the Child of Nature. 



252 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

themselves, from their own day of publication, as con- 
stituting the one great era in the history of man by 
the side of which all other eras were frivolous and 
impertinent ? Thus, in a work of his given to me in 
1812 and probably published in that year, I find him 
incidentally recording of himself that he was at that 
time ' arrived at the age of sixty-three, with a firm 
state of health acquired by temperance, and a peace 
of mind almost independent of the vices of mankind — 
because my knowledge of life has enabled me to place 
my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other 
men's follies and passions, by avoiding all family con- 
nections, and all ambitious pursuits of profit, fame, or 
power.' On reading this passage I was anxious to 
ascertain its date ; but this, on turning to the title page, 
I found thus mysteriously expressed : ' in the 7000th 
year of Astronomical History, and the first day of 
Intellectual Life or Moral World, from the era of this 
work.' Another slight indication of craziness appeared 
in a notion which obstinately haunted his mind that all 
the kings and rulers of the earth would confederate in 
every age against his works, and would hunt them out 
for extermination as keenly as Herod did the innocents 
in Bethlehem. On this consideration, fearing that they 
might be intercepted by the long arms of these wicked 
princes before they could reach that remote Stewartian 
man or his precursor to whom they were mainly ad- 
dressed, he recommended to all those who might be 
impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a 
copy or copies of each work properly secured from 
damp, &c. at a depth of seven or eight feet below the 
surface of the earth ; and on their death-beds to com- 
municate the knowledge of this fact to some con- 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 253 

fidential friends, who in their turn were to send down 
the tradition to some discreet persons of the next 
generation ; and thus, if the truth was not to be dis- 
persed for many ages, yet the knowledge that here 
and there the truth lay buried on this and that con- 
tinent, in secret spots on Mount Caucasus — in the 
sands of Biledulgerid — and in hiding-places amongst 
the forests of America, and was to rise again in some 
distant age and to vegetate and fructify for the univer- 
sal benefit of man, — this knowledge at least was to 
be whispered down from generation to generation ; 
and, in defiance of a myriad of kings crusading against 
him. Walking Stewart was to stretch out the influence 
of his writings through a long series of Xauna8o(poqoi to 
that child of nature whom he saw dimly through a 
vista of many centuries. If this were madness, it 
seemed to me a somewhat sublime madness : and I 
assured him of my co-operation against the kings, 
promising that I would bury ' The Harp of Apollo' in 
my own orchard in Grasmere at the foot of Mount 
Fairfield ; that I would bury ' The Apocalypse of 
Nature' in one of the coves of Helvellyn, and several 
other works in several other places best known to 
myself. He accepted my offer with gratitude ; but 
he then made known to me that he relied on my 
assistance for a still more important service — which 
was this : in the lapse of that vast number of ages 
which would probably intervene between the present 
period and the period at which his works would have 
reached their destination, he feared that the English 
language might itself have mouldered away. ' No ! ' 
I said, ' that was not probable : considering its exten- 
sive diffusion, and that it was now transplanted into all 



254 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

the continents of our planet, I would back the .English 
language against any other on earth.' His own per- 
suasion however was, that the Latin was destined to 
survive all other languages ; it was to be the eternal 
as well as the universal language ; and his desire was 
that I would translate his works, or some part of them, 
into that language.* This 1 promised ; and I seriously 
designed at some leisure hour to translate into Latin a 
selection of passages which should embody an abstract 
of his philosophy. This would have been doing a 
service to all those who might wish to see a digest of 
his peculiar opinions cleared from the perplexities of 
his peculiar diction and brought into a narrow compass 
from the great number of volumes through which they 
are at present dispersed. However, like many another 
plan of mine, it went unexecuted. 

On the whole, if Walking Stewart were at all crazy, 
he was so in a way which did not affect his natural 
genius and eloquence — but rather exalted them. The 

* I was not aware until the moment of writing tliis passage 
tliat "Walking Stewart had publicly made this request three years 
after making it to myself: opening the ' Harp of Apollo,' I have 
just now accidentally stumbled on the following passage, < This 
stupendous work is destined, I fear, to meet a worse fate than 
the Aloe, which as soon as it blossoms loses its stalk. This first 
blossom of reason is threatened with the loss of both its stalk 
and its soil : for, if the revolutionary tyrant should triumph, he 
would destroy all the English books and energies of thought. I 
conjure my readers to translate tliis work into Latin, and to 
bury it in the ground, communicating on their death-beds only 
its place of concealment to men of nature.' 

From the title page of this work, by the way, I learn that 
*the 7000th year of Astronomical History' is taken from the 
Chinese tables, and coincides (as I had supposed) with the year 
1812 of our computation. 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHEK. 255 

old maxim, indeed, that * Great wits to madness sure 
are near allied,' the maxim of Dryden and the popular 
maxim, I have heard disputed by Mr. Coleridge and 
Mr. Wordsworth, who maintain that mad people are 
the dullest and most wearisome of all people. As a 
body, I believe they are so. But I must dissent from 
the authority of Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth so 
far as to distinguish. Where madness is connected, 
as it often is, with some miserable derangement of 
the stomach, liver, &c. and attacks the principle of 
pleasurable life, which is manifestly seated in the 
central organs of the body (i. e. in the stomach and 
the apparatus connected with it), there it cannot but 
lead to perpetual suffering and distraction of thought ; 
and there the patient will be often tedious and in- 
coherent. People who have not suffered from any 
great disturbance in those organs are little aware how 
indispensable to the process of thinking are the mo- 
mentary influxes of pleasurable feeling from the regular 
goings on of life in its primary function ; in fact, until 
the pleasure is withdrawn or obscured, most people 
are not aware that they have any pleasure from the 
due action of the great central machinery of the 
system : proceeding in uninterrupted continuance, the 
pleasure as much escapes the consciousness as the act 
of respiration : a child, in the happiest state of its 
existence, does not know that it is happy. And gen- 
erally whatsoever is the level state of the hourly feeling 
is never put down by the unthinking {i. e. by 99 out 
of 100) to the account of happiness : it is never put 
down with the positive sign, as equal to -j- ^ 5 ^^^ 
simply as =r 0. And men first become aware that it 
was a positive quantity, when they have lost it (i. e. 



256 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

fallen into — x). Meantime the genial pleasure from 
the vital processes, though not represented to the con- 
sciousness, is immanent in every act — impulse — 
motion — word — and thought : and a philosopher sees 
that the idiots are in a state of pleasure, though they 
cannot see it themselves. Now I say that, where this 
principle of pleasure is not attached, madness is often 
little more than an enthusiasm highly exalted ; the 
animal spirits are exuberant and in excess ; and the 
madman becomes, if he be otherwise a man of ability 
and information, all the better as a companion. I have 
met with several such madmen ; and I appeal to my 

brilliant friend. Professor W , who is not a man to 

tolerate dulness in any quarter, and is himself the ideal 
of a delightful companion, whether he ever met a more 
amusing person than that madman who took a post- 
chaise with us from. to Carlisle, long years ago, 

when he and I were hastening with the speed of fugi- 
tive felons to catch the Edinburgh mail. His fancy 
and his extravagance, and his furious attacks on Sir 
Isaac Newton, like Plato's suppers, refreshed us not 
only for that day but whenever they recurred to us ; 
and we were both grieved when we heard some time 
afterwards from a Cambridge man that he had met our 
clever friend in a stage coach under the care of a 

brutal keeper. Such a madness, if any, was the 

madness of Walking Stewart : his health was perfect ; 
his spirits as light and ebullient as the spirits of a bird 
in spring-time ; and his mind unagitated by painful 
thoughts, and at peace with itself. Hence, if he was 
not an amusing companion, it was because the philoso- 
phic direction of his thoughts made him something 
more. Of anecdotes and matters of fact he was not 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 257 

communicative : of all that he had seen in the vast 
compass of his travels he never availed himself in 
conversation. I do not remember at this moment that 
he ever once alluded to his own travels in his inter- 
course with me except for the purpose of weighing 
down by a statement grounded on his own great per- 
sonal experience an opposite statement of many hasty 
and misjudging travellers which he thought injurious to 
human nature : the statement was this, that in all his 
countless rencontres with uncivilized tribes, he had 
never met with any so ferocious and brutal as to attack 
an unarmed and defenceless man who was able to 
make them understand that he threw himself upon 
their hospitality and forbearance. 

On the whole, Walking Stewart was a sublime 
visionary : he had seen and suffered much amongst 
men ; yet not too much, or so as to dull the genial tone 
of his sympathy with the sufferings of others. His 
mind was a mirror of the sentient universe. — The 
whole mighty vision that had fleeted before his eyes in 
this world, — the armies of Hyder-Ali and his son with 
oriental and barbaric pageantry, — ■ the civic grandeur 
of England, the great deserts of Asia and America, — 
the vast capitals of Europe, — London with its eternal 
agitations, the ceaseless ebb and flow of its ' mighty 
heart,' — Paris shaken by the fierce torments of revo- 
lutionary convulsions, the silence of Lapland, and the 
solitaiy forests of Canada, with the swarming life of 
the torrid zone, together with innumerable recollections 
of individual joy and sorrow, that he had participated 
by sympathy — lay like a map beneath him, as if 
eternally co-present to his view ; so that, in the con- 
templation of the prodigious whole, he had no leisure 
22 



258 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

to separate the parts, or occupy his mind with details. 
Hence came the monotony which the frivolous and the 
desultory would have found in his conversation. I, 
however, who am perhaps the person best qualified to 
speak of him, must pronounce him to have been a man 
of great genius ; and, with reference to his conversation, 
of great eloquence. That these were not better known 
and acknowledged was owing to two disadvantages ; 
one grounded in his imperfect education, the other in 
the peculiar structure of his mind. The first was this : 
like the late Mr. Shelley he had a fine vague enthusiasm 
and lofty aspirations in connection with human nature 
generally and its hopes ; and like him he strove to 
give steadiness, a uniform direction, and an intelligible 
purpose to these feelings, by fitting to them a scheme 
of philosophical opinions. But unfortunately the philo- 
sophic system of both was so far from supporting their 
own views and the cravings of their own enthusiasm, 
that, as in some points it was baseless, incoherent, or 
unintelligible, so in others it tended to moral results, 
from which, if they had foreseen them, they would 
have been themselves the first to shrink as contra- 
dictory to the very purposes in which their system had 
originated. Hence, in maintaining their own system 
they both found themselves painfully entangled at 
times whh tenets pernicious and degrading to human 
nature. These were the inevitable consequences of 
the TiQMTov ipsvdog in their speculations ; but were natur- 
ally charged upon them by those who looked carelessly 
into their books as opinions which not only for the 
sake of consistency they thought themselves bound to 
endure, but to which they gave the full weight of their 
sanction and patronage as to so many moving princi- 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 259 

pies in their system. The other disadvantage under 
which Walking Stewart labored, was this : he was a 
man of genius, but not a man of talents ; at least his 
genius was out of all proportion to his talents, and 
wanted an organ as it were for manifesting itself; so 
that his most original thoughts were delivered in a 
crude state — imperfect, obscure, half developed, and 
not producible to a popular audience. He was aware 
of this himself ; and, though he claims everywhere the 
faculty of profound intuition into human nature, yet 
with equal candor he accuses himself of asinine stu- 
pidity, dulness, and want of talent. He was a dispro- 
portioned intellect, and so far a monster : and he must 
be added to the long list of original-minded men who 
have been looked down upon with pity and contempt 
by commonplace men of talent, whose powers of 
mind — though a thousand times inferior — were yet 
more manageable, and ran in channels more suited to 
common uses and common understandings. 



ON SUICIDE. 

It is a remarkable proof of the inaccuracy with 
which most men read — that Donne's Biathanatos has 
been supposed to countenance Suicide ; and those who 
reverence his name have thought themselves obliged 
to apologize for it by urging, that it was written before 
he entered the church. But Donne's purpose in this 
treatise was a pious one : many authors had charged 
the martyrs of the Christian church with Suicide — on 
the principle that if I put myself in the way of a mad 
bull, knowing that he will kill me — I am as much 
chargeable with an act of self- destruction as if I fling 
myself into a river. Several casuists had extended 
this principle even to the case of Jesus Christ : one 
instance of which, in a modern author, the reader 
may see noticed and condemned by Kant, in his Re- 
ligion innerhalb die gronzen der hlossen Vernunft ; and 
another of much earlier date (as far back as the 13th 
century, I think), in a commoner book — Voltaire's 
notes on the little treatise of Beccaria, Dei delitii e 
delle pene. These statements tended to one of two 
results : cither they unsanctified the characters of those 
who founded and nursed the Christian church ; or they 
sanctified suicide. By way of meeting them, Donne 
wrote his book: and as the whole argument of his 
[2G0] 



ON SUICIDE. 261 

opponents turned upon a false definition of suicide 
(not explicitly stated, but assumed), he endeavored to 
reconstitute the notion of what is essential to create an 
act of suicide. Simply to kill a man is not murder : 
prima facie^ therefore, there is some sort of presump- 
tion that simply for a man to kill himself — may not 
always be so : there is such a thing as simple homi- 
cide distinct from murder : there may, therefore, pos- 
sibly be such a thing as self-homicide distinct from 
self-murder. There mai/ be a ground for such a 
distinction, ex analogid. But, secondly, on examina- 
tion, ^5 there any ground for such a distinction ? 
Donne affirms that there is; and, reviewing several 
eminent cases of spontaneous martyrdom, he endeavors 
to show that acts so motived and so circumstantiated 
will not come within the notion of suicide properly 
defined. Meantime, may not this tend to the encour- 
agement of suicide in general, and without discrimina- 
tion of its species ? No : Donne's arguments have no 
prospective reference or application ; they are purely 
retrospective. The circumstances necessary to create 
an act of mere self-homicide can rarely concur, except 
m a state of disordered society, and during the cardinal 
revolutions of human history : where, however, they 
do concur, there it will not be suicide. In fact, this is 
the natural and practical judgment of us all. We do 
not all agree on the particular cases which will justify 
self-destruction: but we all feel and involuntarily 
acknowledge {implicitly acknowledge in our admira- 
tion, though not explicitly in our words or in our 
principles), that there are such cases. There is no 
man, who in his heart would not reverence a woman 
that chose to die rather than to be dishonored : and. 



262 ON SUICIDE. 

if we do not say, tTiat it is her duty to do so, that is 
because the moralist must condescend to the weakness 
and infirmities of human nature : mean and ignoble 
natures must not be taxed up to the level of noble 
ones. Again, with regard to the other sex, corporal 
punishment is its peculiar and sexual degradation ; 
and if ever the distinction of Donne can be applied 
safely to any case, it will be to the case of him who 
chooses to die rather than to submit to that ignominy. 
At present^ however, there is but a dim and very con- 
fined sense, even amongst enlightened men (as we 
may see by the debates of Parliament), of the injury 
which is done to human nature by giving legal sanc- 
tion to such brutalizing acts ; and therefore most men, 
in seeking to escape it, would be merely shrinking 
from a personal dishonor. Corporal punishment is 
usually argued with a single reference to the case of 
him who suffers it ; and so argued, God knows that it 
is worthy of all abhorrence : but the weightiest argu- 
ment against it — is the foul indignity which is offered 
to our common nature lodged in the person of him on 
whom it is inflicted. His nature is our nature : and, 
supposing it possible that he were so far degraded as 
to be unsusceptible of any influences but those which 
address him through the brutal part of his nature, yet 
for the sake of ourselves — No! not merely for our- 
selves, or for the human race now existing, but for the 
sake of human nature, which trancends all existing 
participators of that nature — we should remember 
that the evil of corporal punishment is not to be 
measured by the poor transitory criminal, whose 
memory and offence are soon to perish: these, in 
the sum of things, are as nothing: the injuiy which 



ON SUICIDE. 



2G3 



can be done him, and the injury which ne can do, have 
so momentary an existence that they may be safely 
neglected : but the abiding injury is to the most august 
interest which for the mind of man can have any ex- 
istence,— viz. to his own nature : to raise and dignify 
which, I am persuaded, is the first — last — and holiest 
command * which the conscience imposes on the phi- 
losophic moralist. In countries, where the traveller 
has the pain of seeing human creatures performing the 
labors of brutes, t — surely the sorrow which the 
spectacle moves, if a wise sorrow, will not be chiefly 
directed to the poor degraded individual — too deeply 
degraded, probably, to be sensible of his own degrada- 

* On -whicli account, I am the more struck by the ignoble 
argument of. those statesmen who have contended in the House 
of Commons that such and such classes of men in this nation are 
not accessible to any loftier influences. Supposing that there 
were any truth in this assertion, which is a libel not on this 
nation only, but on man in general, — surely it is the duty of 
lawgivers not to perpetuate by their institutions the evil which 
they find, but to presume and gradually to create a better 
spirit. 

t Of which degradation, let it never be forgotten that France 
but thirty years ago presented as shocking cases as any country, 
even where slavery is tolerated. An eye-witness to the fact, who 
has since published it in print, told me, that in France, before 
the revolution, he had repeatedly seen a woman yoked with an 
ass to the plough ; and the brutal ploughman applying his whip 
indifferently to either. English people, to whom I have occa- 
sionally mentioned this as an exponent of the hollow refinement 
of manners in France, have uniformly exclaimed — ' Tliat is 
more than I can believe ; ' and have taken it for granted that I 
had my information from some prejudiced Englishman. But 
who was my informer? A Frenchman, reader, — M. Simond ; 
and though now by adoption an American citizen, yet still French 
in his heart and in all his prejudices. 



264 ON SUICIDE. 

tion, but to the reflection that man's nature is thus 
exhibited in a state of miserable abasement; and, what 
is worst of all, abasement proceeding from man him- 
self. Now, whenever this view of corporal punish- 
ment becomes general (as inevitably it will, under the 
influence of advancing civilization), I say, that Donne's 
principle will then become applicable to this case, and 
it will be the duty of a man to die rather than to suffer 
his own nature to be dishonored in that way. But so 
long as a man is not fully sensible of the dishonor, to 
him the dishonor, except as a personal one, does not 
wholly exist. In general, whenever a paramount in- 
terest of human nature is at stake, a suicide which 
maintains that interest is self-homicide : but, for a per- 
sonal interest, it becomes self-murder. And into this 
principle Donne's may be resolved. 

A doubt has been raised — whether brute animals 
ever commit suicide : to me it is obvious that they do 
not, and cannot. Some years ago, however, there 
was a case reported in all the newspapers of an old 
ram who committed suicide (as it was alleged) in the 
presence of many witnesses. Not having any pistols 
or razors, he ran for a short distance, in order to aid 
the impetus of his descent, and leaped over a precipice, 
at the foot of which he was dashed to pieces. His 
motive to the ' rash act,' as the papers called it, was 
supposed to be mere icEdium vita. But, for my part, 
I doubted the accuracy of the report. Not long after 
a case occurred in Westmoreland which strengthened 
my doubts. A fine young blood horse, who could 
have no possible reason for making away with him- 
self, unless it were the high price of oats at that time, 



ON SUICIDE. 



265 



was found one morning dead in his field. The case 
was certainly a suspicious one : for he was lying by 
the side of a stone-wall, the upper part of which wall 
his skull had fractured, and which had returned the 
compliment by fracturing his skull. It was argued, 
therefore, that in default of ponds, &c. he had de- 
liberately hammered with his head against the wall ; 
this, at first, seemed the only solution ; and he was 
generally pronounced felo de se. However, a day or 
two brought the truth to light. The field lay upon the 
side of a hill : and, from a mountain which rose above 
it, a shepherd had witnessed the whole catastrophe, 
and gave evidence which vindicated the character of 
the horse. The day had been very windy; and the 
young creature being in high spirits, and, caring evi- 
dently as little for the corn question as for the bullion 
question, had raced about in all directions; and at 
length, descending too steep a part of the field, had 
been unable to check himself, and was projected by 
the impetus of his own descent like a battering ram 
against the wall. 

Of human suicides, the most affecting I have ever 
seen recorded is one which I met with in a German 
book : the most calm and deliberate is the following, 
which is said to have occurred at Keswick, in Cum- 
berland : but I must acknowledge, that I never had an 
opportunity, whilst staying at Keswick, of verifying 
the statement. A young man of studious turn, who is 
said to have resided near Penrith, was anxious to 
qualify himself for entering the church, or for any 
other mode of life which might secure to him a reason- 
able portion of literary leisure. His family, however, 
23 



266 ON SUICIDE. 

thought that under the circumstances of his situation 
he would have a better chance for success in life as a 
tradesman; and they took the necessary steps for 
placing him as an apprentice at some shopkeeper's in 
Penrith. This he looked upon as an indignity, to 
which he was determined in no case to submit. And 
accordingly, when he had ascertained that all oppo- 
sition to the choice of his friends was useless, he 
walked over to the mountainous district of Keswick 
(about sixteen miles distant) — looked about him in 
order to select his ground — cooly walked up Lattrig 
(a dependency of Skiddaw) — made a pillow of sods 
— laid himself down with his face looking up to the 

sky and in that posture was found dead, with the 

appearance of having died tranquilly. 



SUPERriCIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

It is asserted that this is the age of Superficial 
Knowledge ; and amongst the proofs of this assertion 
we find Encyciopsedias and other popular abstracts of 
knowledge particularly insisted on. But in this notion 
and its alleged proofs there is equal error — wherever 
there is much diffusion of knowledge, there must be a 
good deal of superficiality : prodigious extension im- 
plies a due proportion of weak intension ; a sea-like 
expansion of knowledge will cover large shallows as 
well as large depths. But in that quarter in which it 
is superficially cultivated the intellect of this age is 
properly opposed in any just comparison to an intellect 
without any culture at all : — leaving the deep soils out 
of the comparison, the shallow ones of the present day 
would in any preceding one have been barren wastes. 
Of this our modern encyclopedias are the best proof. 
For whom are they designed, and by whom used ? — 
By those who in a former age would have gone to the 
fountain heads ? No, but by those who in any age 
preceding the present would have drunk at no waters 
at all. Encyclopssdias are the growth of the last 
hundred years ; not because those who were formerly 
students of higher learning have descended, but be- 
cause those who were below encyclopaedias have 

[267] 



268 SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

ascended. The greatness of the ascent is marked by 
the style in which the more recent encyclopedias are 
executed : at first they were mere abstracts of existing 
books — well or ill executed : at present they contain 
many original articles of great merit. As in the 
periodical literature of the age, so in the encyclopeedias 
it has become a matter of ambition with the publishers 
to retain the most eminent writers in each several de- 
partment. And hence it is that our encyclopgedias 
now display one characteristic of this age — the very 
opposite of superficiality (and which on other grounds 
we are well assured of) — viz. its tendency in science, 
no less than in other applications of industry, to ex- 
treme subdivision. In all the employments which are 
dependent in any degree upon the political economy 
of nations, this tendency is too obvious to have been 
overlooked. Accordingly it has long been noticed for 
congratulation in manufactures and the useful arts — 
and for censure in the learned professions. We have 
now, it is alleged, no great and comprehensive lawyers 
like Coke: and the study of medicine is subdividing 
itself into a distinct ministry (as it were) not merely 
upon the several organs of the body (oculists, aurists, 
dentists, cheiropodists, &c.) but almost upon the several 
diseases of the same organ : one man is distinguished 
for the treatment of liver complaints of one class — 
a second for those of another class; one man for 
asthma — another for phthisis ; and so on. As to the 
law, the evil (if it be one) lies in the complex state of 
society which of necessity makes the laws complex : 
law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the grasp 
of one man's term of life and possible range of expe- 
rience : and will never again come within them. 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 269 

With respect to medicine, the case is no evil but a 
great benefit — so long as the subdividing principle 
does not descend too low to allow of a perpetual re- 
ascent into the generalizing principle (the t6 commune) 
which secures the unity of the science. In ancient 
times all the evil of such a subdivision was no doubt 
realized in Egypt : for there a distinct body of pro- 
fessors took charge of each organ of the body, not (as 
we may be assured) from any progress of the science 
outgrowing the time and attention of the general pro- 
fessor, but simply from an ignorance of the organic 
structure of the human body and the reciprocal action 
of the whole upon each part and the parts upon the 
whole ; an ignorance of the same kind which has led 
sailors seriously (and not merely, as may sometimes 
have happened, by way of joke) to reserve one ulcer- 
ated leg to their own management, whilst the other 
was given up to the management of the surgeon. With 
respect to law and medicine then, the difference be- 
tween ourselves and our ancestors is not subjective but 
objective ; not, i. e. in our faculties who study them, 
but in the things themselves which are the objects of 
study : not we (the students) are grown less, but they 
(the studies) are grown bigger ; — and that our ances- 
tors did not subdivide as much as we do — was some- 
thing of their luck, but no part of their merit. Simply 
as subdividers therefore to the extent which now pre- 
vails, we are less superficial than any former age. In 
all parts of science the same principle of subdivision 
holds : here therefore, no less than in those parts of 
knowledge which are the subjects of distinct civil pro- 
fessions, we are of necessity more profound than our 
ancestors ; but, for the same reason, less comprehen- 



270 SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

sive than they. Is it better to be a profound student, 
or a comprehensive one ? In some degree this must 
depend upon the direction of the studies : but generally, 
I think, it is better for the interests of knowledge that 
the scholar should aim at profundity, and better for the 
interests of the individual that he should aim at com- 
prehensiveness. A due balance and equilibrium of the 
mind is but preserved by a large and multiform 
knowledge : but knowledge itself is but served by an 
exclusive (or at least paramount) dedication of one 
mind to one science. The first proposition is perhaps 
unconditionally true : but the second with some limi- 
tations. There are such people as Leibnitzes on this 
earth; and their office seems not that of planets — to 
revolve within the limits of one system, but that of 
comets (according to the theory of some speculators) 
— to connect different systems together. No doubt 
there is much truth in this : a few Leibnitzes in every 
age would be of much use : but neither are many men 
fitted by nature for the part of Leibnitz ; nor would 
the aspect of knowledge be better, if they were. We 
should then have a state of Grecian life amongst us in 
which every man individually would attain in a moderate 
degree all the purposes of the sane understanding, — 
but in which all the purposes of the sane understand- 
ing would be but moderately attained. What I mean 
is this : — let all the objects of the understanding in 
civil life or in science be represented by the letters of 
the alphabet ; in Grecian life each man would sepa- 
rately go through all the letters in a tolerable way ; 
whereas at present each letter is served by a distinct 
body of men. Consequently the Grecian individual is 
superior to the modern ; but the Grecian whole is 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 271 

inferior : for the whole is made up of the individuals ; 
and the Grecian individual repeats himself. Whereas 
in modern life the whole derives its superiority from 
the very circumstances which constitute the inferiority 
of the parts ; for modern life is cast dramatically : and 
the difference is as between an army consisting of sol- 
diers who should each individually be competent to go 
through the duties of a dragoon — of a hussar — of a 
sharp-shooter — of an artillery-man — of a pioneer, 
&c. and an army on its present composition, where 
the very inferiority of the soldier as an individual — 
his inferiority in compass and versatility of power and 
knowledge — is the very ground from which the army 
derives its superiority as a whole, viz. because it is 
the condition of the possibility of a total surrender 
of the individual to one exclusive pursuit. In science 
therefore, and (to speak more generally) in the whole 
evolution of the human faculties, no less than in Po- 
litical Economy, the progress of society brings with' it 
a necessity of sacrificing the ideal of what is excellent 
for the individual, to the ideal of what is excellent for 
the whole. We need therefore not trouble ourselves 
(except as a speculative question) with the comparison 
of the two states ; because, as a practical question, it 
is precluded by the overruling tendencies of the age — 
which no man could counteract except in his own 
single case, i. e. by refusing to adapt himself as a part 
to the whole, and thus foregoing the advantages of 
either one state or the other. * 

* The latter part of wliat is here said coincides, in a way which 
is rather remarkable, with a passage in an interesting work of 
Schiller's which I have since read, {oji the Esthetic Education 
of Men, in a series of letters : vid. letter the 6th.) ' With us ia 



272 SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

order to obtain the representative word (as it were) of the total 
species, we must spell it out by the help of a series of individuals. 
So that on a survey of society as it actually exists, one might 
suppose that the faculties of the mind do really in actual expe- 
rience show themselves in as separate a form, and in as much 
insulation, as psychology is forced to exhibit them in its analysis. 
And thus we see not only individuals, but whole classes of men, 
unfolding only one part of the germs which are laid in them by 
the hand of nature. In saying this I am fully aware of the ad- 
vantages which the human species of modern ages has, when 
considered as a unity, over the best of antiquity : but the com- 
parison should begin with the individuals : and then let me ask 
where is the modern individual that would have the presumption 
to step forward against the Athenian individual — man to man, 
and to contend for the prize of human excellence ? The polypus 
nature of the Grecian republics, in which every individual en- 
joyed a separate life, and if it were necessary could become a 
whole, has now given place to an artificial watch-work, where 
many lifeless parts combine to form a mechanic whole. The 
state and the church, laws and manners, are now torn asunder : 
labor is divided from enjoyment, the means from the end, the 
exertion from the reward. Chained for ever to a little individual 
fraction of the whole, man himself is moulded into a fraction ; 
and, with the monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turns 
everlastingly in his ear, he never develops the harmony of his 
being ; and, instead of imaging the totality of human nature, be- 
comes a bare abstract of his business or the science which he 
cultivates. The dead letter takes the place of the living under 
standing ; and a practised memory becomes a surer guide than 
genius and sensibility. Doubtless the power of genius, as we all 
know, will not fetter itself within the limits of its occupation ; 
but talents of mediocrity are all exhausted in the monotony of 
the employment allotted to them ; and that man must have no 
common head who brings with him the geniality of his powers 
unstripped of their freshness by the ungenial labors of life to the 
cultivation of the genial.' After insisting at some length on this 
wise, Schiller passes to the other side of the contemplation, and 
proceeds thus : — 'It suited my immediate purpose to point out 
the injuries of this condition of the species, without displaying 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 273 

the compensations by which nature has balanced them. But I 
wUl now readily acknowledge — that, little as this practical con- 
dition may suit the interests of the individual, yet the species 
could in no other way have been progressive. Partial exercise 
of the faculties (literally '' one-sidedness in the exercise of the 
faculties ") leads the individual undoubtedly into error, but the 
species into truth. In no other way than by concentrating the 
whole energy of our spirit, and by converging our whole being, 
so to speak, into a single faculty, can we put wings as it were to 
the individual faculty and carry it by this artificial flight far 
beyond the limits within which nature has else doomed it to walk. 
Just as certain as it is that all human beings could never, by 
clubbing their visual powers together, have arrived at the power 
of seeing what the telescope discovers to the astronomer ; just so 
certain it is that the human intellect would never have arrived 
at an analysis of the infinite or a Critical Analysis of the Pure 
Reason (the principal work of Kant), unless individuals had 
dismembered (as it were) and insulated this or that specific 
faculty, and had thus armed their intellectual sight by the 
keenest abstraction and by the submersion of the other powers 
of their nature. Extraordinary men are formed then by ener- 
getic and over-excited spasms as it were in the individual facul- 
ties ; though it is true that the equable exercise of all the faculties 
in harmony with each other can alone make happy and perfect 
men.' After this statement, from which it should seem that in 
the progress of society nature has made it necessary for man to 
sacrifice his own happiness to the attainment of her ends in the 
development of his species, Schiller goes on to inquire whether 
this evil result cannot be remedied ; and whether ' the totality 
of our nature, which art has destroyed, might not be re-estab- 
lished by a higher art,' — but this, as leading to a discussion 
beyond the limits of my own, I omit. 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

It has already, I believe, been said more than once 
in print that one condition of a good dictionary would 
be to exhibit the history of each word ; that is, to 
record the exact succession of its meanings. But the 
philosophic reason for this has not been given ; which 
reason, by the way, settles a question often agitated, 
viz. whether the true meaning of a word be best ascer- 
tained from its etymology, or from its present use and 
acceptation. Mr. Coleridge says, ' the best explana- 
tion of a word is often that which is suggested by its 
derivation' (I give the substance of his words from 
memory). Others allege that we have nothing to do 
with the primitive meaning of the word ; that the 
question is — what does it mean now.? and they ap- 
peal, as the sole authority tliey acknowledge, to the 
received — 

Usus, penes quern est jus et norma loquendi. 

In what degree each party is right, may be judged 
from this consideration — that no word can ever de- 
viate from its first meaning per sallum : each successive 
stage of meaning must always have been determined 
by that which preceded. And on this one law depends 
the whole philosophy of the case : for it thus appears 

[27.4] 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 275 

that the original and primitive sense of the word will 
contain virtually all which can ever afterwards arise : 
as in the evolution-theory of generation, the whole 
series of births is represented as involved in the first 
parent. Now, if the evolution of successive meanings 
has gone on rightly, i. e. by simply lapsing through a 
series of close affinities, there can be no reason for 
recurring to the primitive meaning of the word : but, 
if it can be shown that the evolution has been faulty, 
i. e. that the chain of true affinities has ever been 
broken through ignorance, then we have a right to 
reform the word, and to appeal from the usage ill- 
instructed to a usage better-instructed. Whether we 
ought to exercise this right, will depend on a considera- 
tion which I will afterwards notice. Meantime I will 
first give a few instances of faulty evolution. 

1. Implicit. . This word is now used in a most 
ignorant way ; and from its misuse it has come to be a 
word wholly useless : for it is now never coupled, I 
think, with any other substantive than these two — 
faith and confidence : a poor domain indeed to have 
sunk to from its original wide range of territory. 
Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit 
confidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific 
kind of faith and confidence differing from other faith 
or other confidence : but it is a vague rhetorical word 
which expresses a great degree of faith and confidence ; 
a faith that is unquestioning, a confidence that is un- 
limited ; i, e. in fact, a faith that is a fahh, a confi- 
dence that is a confidence. Such a use of the word 
ought to be abandoned to women : doubtless, when 
sitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasant 
to hear from a lovely mouth — ' I put implicit confi- 



276 ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

dence in your honor : ' but, though pretty and becoming 
to such a mouth, it is very unfitting to the mouth of a 
scholar : and I will be bold to affirm that no man, who 
had ever acquired a scholar's knowledge of the English 
language, has used the word in that lax and unmeaning 
way. The history of the word is this. — Implicit 
(from the Latin i?npUcitus, involved in, folded up) was 
always used originally, and still is so by scholars, as 
the direct antithete of explicit (from the Latin explicitus, 
evolved, unfolded ) : and the use of both may be thus 
illustrated. 

Q. ' Did Mr. A. ever say that he would marry Miss 
B. .'* ' — A. ' No ; not explicitly (i. e. in so many 
words) ; but he did implicitly — by showing great dis- 
pleasure if she received attentions from any other 
man ; by asking her repeatedly to select furniture for 
his house ; by consulting her on his own plans of life.' 

Q. ' Did Epicurus maintain any doctrines such as 
are here ascribed to him .? ' — A. ' Perhaps not ex- 
plicitly, either in words or by any other mode of direct 
sanction : on the contrary, 1 believe he denied them — 
and disclaimed them with vehemence : but he main- 
tained them implicitly : for they are involved in other 
acknowledged doctrines of his, and may be deduced 
from them by the fairest and most irresistible logic' 

Q. ' Why did you complain of the man ? Had he 
expressed any contempt for your opinion?' — A. 
' Yes, he had : not explicit contempt, I admit ; for he 
never opened his stupid mouth ; but implicitly he ex- 
pressed the utmost that he could : for, when I had 
spoken two hours against the old newspaper, and in 
favor of the new one, he went instantly and put his 
name down as a subscriber to the old one.' 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 277 

Q. ' Did Mr. approve of that gentleman's con- 
duct and way of life?' — A. 'I don't know that I 
ever heard him speak about it : but he seemed to give 
it his implicit approbation by allowing both his sons to 
associate with him when the complaints ran highest 
against him.' 

These instances may serve to illustrate the original 
use of the word; which use has been retained from 
the sixteenth century down to our own days by an 
uninterrupted chain of writers. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury this use was indeed nearly effaced; but still in 
the first half of that century it was retained by Saun- 
derson the Cambridge professor of mathematics (see 
his Algebra, &c.), with three or four others, and in 
the latter half by a man to whom Saunderson had 
some resemblance in spring and elasticity of under- 
standing, viz. by Edmund Burke. Since his day I 
know of no writers who have avoided the slang and 
unmeaning use of the word, excepting Messrs. Coleridge 
and Wordsworth; both of whom (but especially the 
last) have been remarkably attentive to the scholar- 
like * use of words, and to the history of their own 
language. 

Thus much for the primitive use of the word implicit. 

* Among the most sliocking of the unscholarlike barbarisms, 
now prevalent, I must notice the use of the word ' nice ' in an 
objective instead of a subjective sense : ' nice ' does not and can- 
not express a quality of the object, but merely a quality of the 
subject : yet we hear daily of ' a very nice letter ' — 'a nice 
young lady,' &c., meaning a letter or a young lady that it is 
pleasant to contemplate : but ' a nice young lady ' — means a 
fastidious young lady ; and ' a nice letter ' ought to mean a letter 
that is very delicate in its rating and in the choice of its 
company. 



278 ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

Now, with regard to the history of its transition into 
its present use, it is briefly this ; and it will appear at 
once, that it has arisen through ignorance. When it 
was objected to a papist that his church exacted an 
assent to a great body of traditions and doctrines to 
which it was impossible that the great majority could 
be qualified, either as respected time — or knowledge 
— or culture of the understanding, to give any reason- 
able assent, — the answer was : ' Yes ; but that sort 
of assent is not required of a poor uneducated man ; 
all that he has to do — is to believe in the church : 
he is to have faith in her faith : by that act he adopts 
for his own whatsoever the church believes, though he 
may never have heard of it even : his faith is implicit, 
i. e. involved and wrapped up in the faith of the 
church, which faith he firmly believes to be the true 
faith upon the conviction he has that the church is 
preserved from all possibility of erring by the spirit 
of God.' * Now, as this sort of believing by proxy or 
implicit belief (in which the belief was not immediate 
in the thing proposed to the belief, but in the authority 
of another person who believed in that thing and thus 
mediately in the thing itself) was constantly attacked 
by the learned assailants of popery, — it naturally 
happened that many unlearned readers of these pro- 

* Thus Milton, who (in common with his contemporaries) 
always uses the word accurately, speaks of Ezekiel ' swallowing 
his implicit roll of knowledge ' — i. e. coming to the knowledge 
of many truths not separately and in detail, but by the act of 
arriving at some one master truth which involved all the rest. — 
So again, if any man or government were to suppress a book, 
that man or government might justly be reproached as the im- 
plicit destroyer of all the wisdom and virtue that might have 
been the remote products of that book. 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 279 

testant polemics caught at a phrase which was so much 
bandied between the two parties : the spirit of the 
context sufficiently explained to them that it was used 
by protcstants as a term of reproach, and indicated a 
faith that was an erroneous faith by being too easy — 
too submissive — and too passive : but the particular 
mode of this erroneousness they seldom came to 
understand, as learned writers naturally employed the 
term without explanation, presuming it to be known to 
those whom they addressed. Hence these ignorant 
readers caught at the last result of the phrase ' im- 
plicit faith' rightly, truly supposing it to imply a 
resigned and unquestioning faith ; but they missed the 
whole immediate cause of meaning by which only the 
word ' implicit ' could ever have been entitled to ex- 
press that result. 

I have allowed myself to say so much on this word 
' implicit,' because the history of the mode by which 
its true meaning was lost applies almost to all other 
corrupted words — mutatis mutandis : and the amount 
of it may be collected into this formula, — that the 
result of the word is apprehended and retained, but the 
schematismus by which that result was ever reached is 
lost. This is the brief theory of all corruption of 
words. The word schematismus I have unwillingly 
used, because no other expresses my meaning.. So 
great and extensive a doctrine however lurks in this 
word, that I defer the explanation of it to a separate 
article. Meantime a passable sense of the word will 
occur to every body who reads Greek. I now go on 
to a few more instances of words that have forfeited 
their original meaning through the ignorance of those 
who used them. 



280 ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

' Punctual.'' This word is now confined to the 
meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to time — 
fidelity to the precise moment of an appointment. 
But originally it was just as often, and just as reason- 
ably, applied to space as to time ; ' I cannot punctually 
determine the origin of the Danube ; but I know in 
general the district in which it rises, and that its 
fountain is near that of the Rhine.' Not only, however, 
was it applied to time and space, but it had a large 
and very elegant figurative use. Thus in the History 
of the Royal Society by Sprat (an author who was 
finical and nice in his use of words) — I remember a 
sentence to this effect: 'the Society gave punctual 
directions for the conducting of experiments;' i. e. 
directions which descended to the minutiae and lowest 
details. Again in the once popular romance of Paris- 
mus Prince of Bohemia — ' She ' (I forget who) ' made 
a punctual relation of the whole matter ; ' i. e. a rela- 
tion which was perfectly circumstantial and true to 
the minutest features of the case. 



DRYDEN'S HEXASTICH. 



It is a remarkable fact, that the very finest epigram 
in the English language happens also to be the worst. 
Epigram I call it in the austere Greek sense ; which 
thus far resembled our modern idea of an epigram, that 
something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in 
the management of the leading thought at its close, 
but otherwise nothing tending towards the comic or 
the ludicrous. The epigram I speak of is the well- 
known one of Dryden dedicated to the glorification 
of Milton. It is irreproachable as regards its severe 
brevity. Not one word is there that could be spared ; 
nor could the wit of man have cast the movement of 
the thought into a better mould. There are three 
couplets. In the first couplet we are reminded of the 
fact that this earth had, in three difterent stages of its 
development, given birth to a trinity of transcendent 
poets ; meaning narrative poets, or, even more nar- 
rowly, epic poets. The duty thrown upon the second 
couplet is to characterize these three poets, and to 
value them against each other, but in such terms as 
that, whilst nothing less than the very highest praise 
should be assigned to the two elder poets in this 
24 [281] 



282 dryden's hexastich. 

trinity — the Greek and the Roman — nevertheless, 
by some dexterous artifice, a higher praise than the 
highest should suddenly unmask itself, and drop, as 
it were, like a diadem from the clouds upon the brows 
of their English competitor. In the kind of expectation 
raised, and in the extreme difficulty of adequately 
meeting this expectation, there was pretty much the 
same challenge offered to Dryden as was offered, 
somewhere about the same time, to a British ambassa- 
dor when dining with his political antagonists. One 
of these — the ambassador of France — had proposed 
to drink his master, Louis XIV., under the character 
of the sun, who dispensed life and light to the whole 
political system. To this there was no objection ; 
and immediately, by way of intercepting any further 
draughts upon the rest of the solar system, the Dutch 
ambassador rose, and proposed the health of their high 
mightinesses the Seven United States, as the moon and 
six * planets, who gave light in the absence of the sun. 
The two foreign ambassadors, Monsieur and Mynheer, 
secretly enjoyed the mortification of their English 
brother, who seemed to be thus left in a state of 
bankruptcy, ' no funds ' being available for retaliation, 
or so they fancied. But suddenly our British repre- 
sentative toasted his master as Joshua, the son of Nun, 
that made the sun and moon stand still. All had 
seemed lost for England, when in an instant of time 
both her antagonists were checkmated. Dryden as- 
sumed something of the same position. He gave 
away the supreme jewels in his exchequer ; apparently 
nothing remained behind; all was exhausted. To 

* ' Six planets ; ' — No more had then been discovered. 



dryden's hexastich. 283 

Homer he gave A ; to Virgil he gave B ; and, behold ! 
after these were given away, there remained nothing 
at all that would not have been a secondary praise. 
But, in a moment of time, by giving A and B to 
Milton, at one sling of his victorious arm he raised 
him above Homer by the whole extent of B, and above 
Virgil by the whole extent of A. This felicitous eva- 
sion of the embarrassment is accomplished in the 
second couplet; and, finally, the third couplet winds 
up with graceful effect, by making a resume, or recapi- 
tulation of the logic concerned in the distribution of 
prizes just announced. Nature, he says, had it not in 
her power to provide a third prize separate from the 
first and second ; her resource was, to join the first 
and second in combination: 'To make a third, she 
joined the former two.' 

Such is the abstract of this famous epigram ; and, 
judged simply by the outline and tendency of the 
thought, it merits all the vast popularity which it has 
earned. But in the meantime, it is radically vicious 
as regards the filling in of this outline ; for the par- 
ticular quality in which Homer is accredited with the 
pre-eminence, viz., loftiness of thought, happens to be 
a mere variety of expression for that quality, viz. 
majesty, in which the pre-eminence is awarded to 
Virgil. Homer excels Virgil in the very point in 
which lies Virgil's superiority to Homer; and that 
synthesis, by means of which a great triumph is 
reserved to Milton, becomes obviously impossible, 
when it is perceived that the supposed analytic 
elements of this synthesis are blank reiterations of 
each other 

Exceedingly strikmg it is, that a thought should 



284 uryden's hexastich. 

have prospered for one hundred and seventy years, 
which, on the slightest steadiness of examination, turns 
out to be no thought at all, but mere blank vacuity. 
There is, however, this justification of the case, that 
the mould, the set of channels, into which the metal of 
the thought is meant to run, really has the felicity 
which it appears to have : the form is perfect ; and it 
is merely in the matter, in the accidental filling up of 
the mould, that a fault has been committed. Had the 
Virgilian point of excellence been loveliness instead of 
majesty, or any word whatever suggesting the common 
antithesis of sublimity and beauty ; or had it been 
power on the one side, matched against grace on 
the other, the true lurking tendency of the thought 
would have been developed, and the sub-conscious 
purpose of the epigram would have fulfilled itself to 
the letter. 

N. B. — It is not meant that loftiness of thought 
and majesty are expressions so entirely interchange- 
able, as that no shades of difference could be sug- 
gested ; it is enough that these ' shades ' are not 
substantial enough, or broad enough, to support the 
weight of opposition which the epigram assigns to 
them. Grace and elegance, for instance, are far from 
being in all relations synonymous ; but they are so to 
the full extent of any purposes concerned in this 
epigram. Nevertheless, it is probable enough that 
Dryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of the 
word majesty, which, if developed, would have done 
justice to his meaning. It was, perhaps, the decorum 
and sustained dignity of the composition — the work- 
manship apart from the native grandeur of the ma- 
terials — the majestic style of the artistic treatment as 



dryden's hexastich. 285 

distinguished from the original creative power — which 
Dryden, the translator of the Roman poet, familiar 
therefore with his weakness and with his strength, 
meant in this place to predicate as characteristically- 
observable in Virgil. 



POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON. 

There is nothing extraordinary, or that could merit 
a special notice, in a simple case of oversight, or in a 
blunder, though emanating from the greatest of poets. 
But such a case challenges and forces our attention, 
when we know that the particular passage in which it 
occurs was wrought and burnished with excessive 
pains ; or (which in thig case is also known) when 
that particular passage is pushed into singular promi- 
nence as having obtained a singular success. In no 
part of his poetic mission did Pope so fascinate the 
gaze of his contemporaries as in his functions of 
satirist ; which functions, in his latter years, absorbed 
all other functions. And one reason, I believe, why 
it was that the interest about Pope decayed so rapidly 
after his death (an accident somewhere noticed by 
Wordsworth), must be sought in the fact, that the most 
stinging of his personal allusions, by which he had 
given salt to his later writings, were continually losing 
their edge, and sometimes their intelligibility, as Pope's 
own contemporary generation was dying off. Pope 
alleges it as a palliation of his satiric malice, that it had 
been forced from him in the way of retaliation ; for- 
getting that such a plea wilfully abjures the grandest, 
justification of a satirist, viz., the deliberate assump- 

[286] 



pope's retort upon ADDISON. 287 

tion of the character as something corresponding to 
the prophet's mission amongst the Hebrews. It is no 
longer the facit indignatio versum. Pope's satire, 
where even it was most effective, was personal and 
vindictive, and upon that argument alone could not be 
philosophic. Foremost in the order of his fulminations 
stood, and yet stands, the bloody castigation by which, 
according to his own pretence, he warned and menaced 
(but by which, in simple truth, he executed judgment 
upon) his false friend, Addison. 

To say that this drew vast rounds of applause upon 
its author, and frightened its object into deep silence 
for the rest of his life, like the Quos ego of angry 
Neptune, sufficiently argues that the verses must have 
ploughed as deeply as the Russian knout. Vitriol 
could not scorch more fiercely. And yet the whole 
passage rests upon a blunder ; and the blunder is so 
broad and palpable, that it implies instant forgetfulness 
both in the writer and the reader. The idea which 
furnishes the basis of the passage is this : that the 
conduct ascribed to Addison is in its own nature so 
despicable, as to extort laughter by its primary im- 
pulse ; but that this laughter changes into weeping, 
when we come to understand that the person concerned 
in this delinquency is Addison. The change, the 
transfiguration, in our mood of contemplating the 
offence, is charged upon the discovery which we are 
supposed to make as to the person of the offender ; 
that which by its baseness had been simply comic 
when imputed to some corresponding author, passes 
into a tragic coup-de-theatre, when it is suddenly traced 
back to a man of original genius. The whole, there- 
fore, of this effect is made to depend upon the sudden 



288 



scenical transition from a supposed petty criminal to 
one of high distinction. And, meantime, no such stage 
effect had been possible, since the knowledge that a 
man of genius was the offender had been what we 
started with from the beginning. ' Our laughter is 
changed to tears,' says Pope, ' as soon as we discover 
that the base act had a noble author.' And, behold ! 
the initial feature in the whole description of the case 
is, that the libeller was one whom ' true genius fired : ' 

* Peace to all such ! But were there one whose mind 
True genius fires,' &c. 

Before the offence is described, the perpetrator is 
already characterized as a man of genius : and, in 
spite of that knowledge^ we laugh. But suddenly our 
mood changes, and we weep, but why ? I beseech you. 
Simply because we have ascertained the author to be 
a man of genius. 

' Who would not laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? ' 

The sole reason for weeping is something that we 
knew already before we began to laugh. 

It would not be right in logic, in fact, it would be a 
mis-classification, if I should cite as at all belonging to 
the same group several passages in Milton that come 
very near to Irish bulls, by virtue of distorted language. 
One reason against such a classification would lie pre- 
cisely in that fact — viz., that the assimilation to the 
category of bulls lurks in the verbal expression, and 
not (as in Pope's case) amongst the conditions of the 
thought. And a second reason would lie in the strange 
circumstance, that Milton had not fallen into this snare 
of diction through any carelessness or oversight, but 



pope's retort upon ADDISON. 289 

with his eyes wide open, deliberately avowing his error 
as a special elegance ; repeating it ; and well aware 
of splendid Grecian authority for his error, if anybody 
should be bold enough to call it an error. Every 
reader must be aware of the case — 

* Adam the goodliest man of men since born 
His sons ; the fairest of her daughters Eye ' — 

which makes Adam one of his own sons, Eve one of 
her own daughters. This, however, is authorized by 
Grecian usage in the severest writers. Neither can it 
be alleged that these might be bold poetic expressions, 
harmonizing with the Grecian idiom; for Poppo has 
illustrated this singular form of expression in a prose- 
writer, as philosophic and austere as Thucydides ; a 
form which (as it offends against logic) must offend 
equally in all languages. Some beauty must have 
been described in the idiom, such as atoned for its 
solecism : for Milton recurs to the same idiom, and 
under the same entire freedom of choice, elsewhere ; 
particularly in this instance, which has not been pointed 
out : ' And never,' says Satan to the abhorred phan- 
toms of Sin and Death, when crossing his path, 

' And never saw till now 
Sight more detestable than him and thee.' 

Now, therefore, it seems, he had seen a sight more 
detestable than this very sight. He now looked upon 
something more hateful than X Y Z. What was it ? 
It was X Y Z. 

But the authority of Milton, backed by that of in- 
solent Greece, would prove an overmatch for the 
logic of centuries. And I withdraw, therefore, from 
the rash attempt to quarrel with this sort of bull, in- 
25 



290 pope's retort upon addison. 

vplving itself in the verbal expression. But the 
following, which lies rooted in the mere facts and 
incidents, is certainly the most extraordinary practical 
bull ^ that all literature can furnish. And a stranger 
thing, perhaps, than the oversight itself lies in this — 
that not any critic throughout Europe, two only ex- 
cepted, but has failed to detect a blunder so memora- 
ble. All the rampant audacity^ of Bentley — ' slashing 
Bentley' — all the jealous malignity of Dr. Johnson — 
who hated Milton without disguise as a republican, but 
secretly and under a mask would at any rate have 
hated him from jealousy of his scholarship — had not 
availed to sharpen these practised and these interested 
eyes into the detection of an oversight which argues a 
sudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton ; 
and in many generations of readers, however alive and 
awake with malice, a corresponding forgetfulness not 
less astonishing. Two readers only I have ever heard 
of that escaped this lethargic inattention ; one of which 
two is myself; and I ascribe my success partly to good 
luck, but partly to some merit on my own part in 
having cultivated a habit of systematically accurate 
reading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to read 
truly and faithfully. I profess allegiance for the time 
to the man whom I undertake to study ; and I am as 
loyal to all the engagements involved in such a con- 
tract, as if I had come under a sacramentum militare. 
So it was that, whilst yet a boy, I came to perceive, 
with a wonder not yet exhausted, that unaccountable 
blunder which Milton has committed in the main nar- 
rative on which the epic fable of the ' Paradise Lost ' 
turns as its hinges. And many a year afterwards I 
found that Paul Richter, whose vigilance nothing es- 



pope's retort upon ADDISON. 291 

caped, who carried with him through life ' the eye of 
the hawk, and the fire therein,' had not failed to make 
the same discovery. It is this : The archangel Satan 
has designs upon man ; he meditates his ruin ; and it 
is known that he does. Specially to counteract these 
designs, and for no other purpose whatever, a choir 
of angelic police is stationed at the gates of Paradise, 
having (I repeat) one sole commission, viz., to keep 
watch and ward over the threatened safety of the 
newly created human pair. Even at the very first 
this duty is neglected so thoroughly, that Satan gains 
access without challenge or suspicion. That is awful : 
for, ask yourself, reader, how a constable or an in- 
spector of police would be received who had been 
stationed at No. 6, on a secret information, and spent 
the night in making love at No. 15. Through the 
regular surveillance at the gates, Satan passes without 
objection ; and he is first of all detected by a purely 
accidental collision during the rounds of the junior 
angels. The result of this collision, and of the exam- 
mation which follows, is what no reader can ever for- 
get — so unspeakable is the grandeur of that scene 
between the two hostile archangels, when the Fiend 
(so named at the moment under the fine machinery 
used by Milton for exalting or depressing the ideas of 
his nature) finally takes his flight as an incarnation 

of darkness. 

' And fled 
Murmuring ; and with him fled the shades of night. 

The darkness flying with him, naturally we have the 
feeling that he is the darkness, and that all darkness 
has some essential relation to Satan. 

But now, having thus witnessed his terrific expulsion, 



292 pope's retort upon addison. 

naturally we ask what was the sequel. Four books, 
however, are interposed before we reach the answer 
to that question. This is the reason that we fail to 
remark the extraordinary oversight of Milton. Dis- 
located from its immediate plan in the succession of 
incidents, that sequel eludes our notice, which else and 
in its natural place would have shocked us beyond 
measure. The simple abstract of the whole story is, 
that Satan, being ejected, and sternly charged under 
Almighty menaces not to intrude upon the young 
Paradise of God, ' rides with darkness ' for exactly one 
week, and, having digested his wrath rather than his 
fears on the octave of his solemn banishment, without 
demur, or doubt, or tremor, back he plunges into the 
very centre of Eden. On a Friday, suppose, he is 
expelled through the main entrance : on the Friday 
following he re-enters upon the forbidden premises 
through a clandestine entrance. The upshot is, that 
the heavenly police suffer, in the first place, the one 
sole enemy, who was or could be the object of their 
vigilance, to pass without inquest or suspicion ; thus 
they inaugurate their task; secondly, by the merest 
accident (no thanks to their fidelity) they detect him, 
and with awful adjurations sentence him to perpetual 
banishment ; but, thirdly, on his immediate return, in 
utter contempt of their sentence, they ignore him 
altogether, and apparently act upon Dogberry's di- 
rection, that, upon meeting a thief, the police may 
suspect him to be no true man ; and, with such man- 
ner of men, the less they meddle or make, the more 
it will be for their honesty. 



NOTE 



Note 1. Page 290. 

It is strange, or rather it is not strange, considering the 
feebleness of that lady in such a field, that Miss Edgeworth 
always fancied herself to have caught Milton in a bull, under 
circumstances which, whilst leaving the shadow of a bull, effec- 
tually disown the substance. * And in the lowest deep a lower 
deep still opens to devour me.' This is the passage denounced 
by Miss Edgeworth. ' If it was already the lowest deep,' said 
the fair lady, ' how the deuce (no, perhaps it might be / that 
said 'how the deuce ') could it open into a lower deep? ' Yes, 
how could it ? In carpentry, it is clear to my mmd that it could 
not. But, in cases of deep imaginative feeling, no phenomenon 
is more natural than precisely this never-ending growth of one 
colossal grandeur chasing and surmounting another, or of abysses 
that swallowed up abysses. Persecutions of this class oftentimes 
are amongst the symptoms of fever, and amongst the inevitable 
spontaneities of nature. Other people I have known who were 
incHned to class amongst bulls Milton's all-famous expression 
of 'darkness visible,' whereas it is not even a bold or daring ex- 
pression ; it describes a pure optical experience of very common 
occurrence. There are two separate darknesses or obscurities : 
first, that obscurity by which you see dimly ; and secondly, that 
obscui'ity which you see. The first is the atmosphere through 
which vision is performed, and, therefore, part of the subjective 
conditions essential to the act of seeing. The second is the object 

[293] 



294 NOTE. 

of your sight. In a glass-house at night illuminated by a sullen 
fire in one corner, but else dark, you see the darkness massed in 
the rear as a black object. That is the ' visible darkness.' And 
on the other hand, the murky atmosphere between you and the 
distant rear is not the object, but the medium, through or athwart 
which you descry the black masses. The first darkness is suh~ 
jedive darkness ; that is, a darkness in your own eye, and 
entangled with your very faculty of vision. The second darkness 
is perfectly different : it is objective darkness ; that is to say, 
not any darkness which affects or modifies your faculty of seeing 
either for better or worse ; but a darkness which is the object 
of your vision ; a darkness which you see projected from your- 
self as a massy volume of blackness, and projected, possibly, to a 
vast distance. 



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